Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 2012, Vol. 18, No. 3, 258-267 © 2012 American Psychological Association 1099-9809/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0028423 A Latent Profile Analysis of Asian American Men's and Women's Adherence to Cultural Values Y. Joel Wong, Chi P. Nguyen, Shu-Yi Wang, Weilin Chen, and Jesse A. Steinfeldt Indiana University Bloomington Bryan S. K. Kim University of Hawai'i at Hilo The goal of this study was to identify diverse profiles of Asian American women's and men's adherence to values that are salient in Asian cultures (i.e., conformity to norms, family recognition through achievement, emotional self-control, collectivism, and humility). To this end, the authors conducted a latent profile analysis using the 5 subscales of the Asian American Values Scale-Multidimensional in a sample of 214 Asian Americans. The analysis uncovered a four-cluster solution. In general. Clusters 1 and 2 were characterized by relatively low and moderate levels of adherence to the 5 dimensions of cultural values, respectively. Cluster 3 was characterized by the highest level of adherence to the cultural value of family recognition through achievement, whereas Cluster 4 was typified by the highest levels of adherence to collectivism, emotional self-control, and humility. Clusters 3 and 4 were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms than Cluster 1. Furthermore, Asian American women and Asian American men had lower odds of being in Cluster 4 and Cluster 3, respectively. These findings attest to the importance of identifying specific pattems of adherence to cultural values when examining the relationship between Asian Americans' cultural orientation and mental health status. Keywords: Asian Americans, cultural values, depression, gender, cluster analysis Over the past decade, there has been accumulating scholarly interest in the relationship between Asian Americans' adherence to values salient to Asian cultures and mental health outcomes (Kim, 2007; Suinn, 2010). Nevertheless, empirical support for this rela- tionship has been mixed. Studies have found that Asian Ameri- cans' adherence to these cultural values was positively related to cultural adjustment difficulties, depressive symptoms, and lower levels of subjective well-being (Iwamoto & Liu, 2010; Shim & Schwartz, 2007; Wong, Tran, & Lai, 2009).' Conversely, other studies have shown that Asian Americans' adherence to cultural values was not significantly related to suicidal behavior (Choi & Rogers, 2010), depressive symptoms (Gonzales, Ramos-Sánchez, Tran, & Roeder, 2006; Iwamoto, Liao, & Liu, 2010), and psycho- logical distress (Shim & Schwartz, 2008). One limitation of the extant literature is a lack of empirical attention to potential heterogeneity among Asian Americans in their profiles of adherence to cultural values, as well as the multidimensional nature of cultural values. For instance, Kim, Li, and Ng (2005) identified the following value dimensions that are relatively salient in Asian cultures; collectivism, conformity to norms, emotional self-control, family recognition through achieve- This article was published Online First June 11, 2012. Y. Joel Wong, Chi P. Nguyen, Shu-Yi Wang, Weilin Chen, and Jesse A. Steinfeldt, Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, Indiana University Bloomington; Bryan S. K. Kim, Department of Psychology, University of Hawai'i at Hilo. The third and fourth authors contributed equally to this article. Correspondence conceming this article should be addressed to Y. Joel Wong, Indiana University, 201 North Rose Avenue, School of Education, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: joelwong@indiana.edu ment, and humility (although these are not the only sahent values in Asian cultures). Using the cultural value dimensions identified by Kim et al., it is possible that some Asian Americans might experience psychological distress associated with a particular pro- file of adherence to cultural values (e.g., high levels of collectivism and humility), whereas other Asian Americans might experience distress related to a different profile of adherence to cultural values. As described below, such a conceptualization is consistent with a metatheoretical perspective known as the person-oriented ñ^amework (Bergman & Magnusson, 1997). Person-Oriented Framework A key tenet of the person-oriented framework is that individu- als' psychosocial functioning is best understood through a holistic and interactionistic perspective of the individual (von Eye & Bergman, 2003). This perspective focuses on individuals, rather than on variables, as the main unit of analysis in research (Berg- man & Magnusson, 1997). That is, the goal of research is to identify distinct groups of individuals with different pattems of variations across a set of variables. The person-oriented framework has been applied in several studies that address the heterogeneous cultural experiences of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians (Chia & Costigan, 2006; Weaver & Kim, 2008; Wong & Maffini, 2011). For instance, Chia and Costigan (2006) used cluster anal- ysis to classify Chinese Canadians into distinct subgroups demon- strating diverse acculturation pattems based on their Chinese and ' Throughout this article, we use the term "cultural values" to refer to values that are salient in Asian cultures. It is, however, important to acknowledge that these cultural values are not unique to Asian cultures; individuals from other cultures may also adhere to these values. 258