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A number of factors were found to influence the acculturation process, including, length of time living in the host country (Zheng and Berry, 1991), socio-economic status (Aroian et al, 1998) and social support from the host society (Garcia et al, 2002).

Given the strong Greek culture preservation shown in the current sample, we believe that the participants did not follow assimilation or marginalization strategies in which they would become more alienated toward their own culture. For example, assimilated individuals do not want to keep their identity from their home culture, but would rather take on all of the characteristics of the new culture. On the contrary marginalized individuals don’t want anything to do with either the new culture or the old culture. The results cannot be explained by separation either - where the individuals become alienated toward the host culture and totally separate them from the main society. Our results indicated that 76% of the participants identified themselves as “Greek American” with a socioeconomic status which is above the average in the sampled geographic area (NJ, PA, and VA) based on the 2010 U.S. Census. About half of the participants did not prefer to speak Greek when they were among people who understand Greek (Q15). Third, the majority of the participants did not agree that people of Greek descent should marry people of Greek descent (Q30), and neither did they agree that they would be unhappy if their children married someone who was not a member of the Greek Orthodox Church (Q31), which indicated that they are open to marry non-Greek partners. Our results showed that the participants of this survey had adjusted to the American culture instead of isolating themselves from the host culture. Therefore, the major mode Greek Americans took is integration, by which, the participants embrace both their culture of origin and the society of settlement - thus getting the best of both worlds. The results indicate that the participants have strong positive attitudes and behaviors towards preserving the Greek heritage. For example, they thought it is important for their children and people of Greek ancestry to speak Greek, they routinely attended worship services at the Greek Orthodox Church, they participated in Greek organizations like AHEPA and they attended Greek heritage events with a sense of pride and bond with other Greeks.

All these characteristics demonstrated that the Greek-Americans had amply preserved their culture of origin and they gradually integrated themselves into the main society. In addition, the participants showed a more democratic attitude which has been influenced by their integration into the American culture. For example, the majority of the Second and Third or beyond generations disagreed that the father should have the final say in most important decisions.

Overall, we identified a shift from Greek culture values to shared Greek-American values through generations. Such shift may reflect the need to utilize the best of both cultures. As Karpathakis (1999b) argued that with economic and cultural glo本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。