Cultural Tailoring of a Remote Acculturation-Based Health Intervention: A Reflection on Researcher Positionality

Remote acculturation has important health implications for individuals in the Majority World (Ferguson, Tran, Mendez, & van de Vijver, 2017). We designed the J(amaican) U(nited) S(tates) Media? Programme to address the problem of unhealthy eating among Americanized individuals in Jamaica (Ferguson, Muzaffar, et al., 2017). JUS Media? is a food-focused media literacy program teaching critical thinking skills about U.S. cable food ads, and comprises workshop and SMS/texting components. This paper describes the tailoring of the SMS component to the Jamaican culture, reflecting on the positionality of the researchers/interventionists in this process.

Positionality is the dialogical process by which the researcher acknowledges and delineates his/her own position in relation to the project, knowing that one’s position (e.g., insider/outsider) may influence data collection/interpretation (Merriam et al., 2001). Our team included researchers based in the U.S. and Jamaica: some were cultural insiders to Jamaica, others were cultural outsiders, and one member was bicultural with dual perspectives. We will focus on the positionality of one particular research team-member (first author) who negotiated two identities: 1) a remotely acculturated individual to U.S. culture from another Majority World region (i.e., an insider to the experience of remote acculturation and its health impacts), and 2) a cross-cultural psychologist serving in a new context (i.e., a cultural outsider to Jamaica). We will describe efforts to ensure cultural match and conceptual equivalency in SMS design (van de Vijver & Tanzer, 2004), and reflect on managing this researcher’s double-barreled researcher identity throughout (e.g., navigating benefits/drawbacks of researcher remote acculturation).