Culture and crisis:: cultural adaptation in university students in Spain and the United States

Cultural Adaptation is the process by which a dominant culture group interacts among non-dominant culture groups in society and groups behaviors change as a result. This process often results in inter-cultural stress, but also results in positive inter-cultural adaptation. Historical and current literature are reviewed theoretically in which this process is situated in terms of Eriksonian psychosocial development. This paper describes the Cultural Adaptation Development Inventory (CADI) measure and three studies which use data from the CADI: an attempt to create a multilevel model using CADI and GPA of an American data set, an exploratory factor analysis study of a Spanish data set, and a Rasch modeling study of both groups. Implications for understanding cultural adaptation and university learning are discussed.