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Kim and Lee: Dietary Behavior of Marriage Migrant Women according to Their Nationality in Multicultural Families
Research Article

Korean Journal of Community Nutrition 2016; 21(1): 53-64.

Published online: 29 February 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5720/kjcn.2016.21.1.53

Dietary Behavior of Marriage Migrant Women according to Their Nationality in Multicultural Families

Jung-Hyun Kim, Myung-Hee Lee

Department of Home Economics Education, PaiChai University, Daejeon, Korea.

Corresponding author: Myung-Hee Lee. Department of Home economics Education, Paichai University, 155-40, Baejae-ro, Seo-gu, Daejeon, 35345, Korea. Tel: (042) 520-5423, Fax: 070-4362-6292, mhlee@pcu.ac.kr

Received 28 January 2016       Revised 22 February 2016       Accepted 25 February 2016

Copyright © 2016 The Korean Society of Community Nutrition

(open-access):

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Objectives

Nowadays, the multicultural families make up significant portion of Korean population and communities. Successful re-settling in a new country can be difficult, particularly when there are disparities in dietary behavior compared to home country. The objective of the study was to investigate the dietary behavior of marriage migrant women according to their nationality in multicultural families.

Methods

The primary research was conducted targeting 94 marriage migrant women who came from China (40.4%), Vietnam (26.6%), and other countries except for Japan (33.0%). We investigated their dietary behavior, such as eating attitude and food choice behavior for Korea acculturation. We also studied dietary behavior among 14 selected subjects who had high level of integration and assimilation acculturation patterns by administering the Focus Group Interview (FGI).

Results

The multicultural families had more integration acculturation patterns, which could have been influenced by their nationality. Vietnamese origin has the highest cultural adaptation as marginalization pattern. The common types of Korea acculturation were integration (3.03 ± 1.08), separation (3.10 ± 0.59), marginalization (3.10 ± 0.58), followed by assimilation (2.84 ± 0.51). There were significant differences in the four types of acculturation by marriage immigrant women's country of origin (p<0.05). According to dietary behavior, 'eliminating hunger' was the most important value in a meal. Chinese marriage migrant women, who had higher level of food intake attitude significantly, also considered 'being healthy' an important value. Regarding food choice behavior, Vietnamese had lowest frequency of homeland food intake. Most of marriage immigrant women were satisfied with the Korean food, and need for education was very high with interest for cooking, good nutrition, and managing their children's dietary life.

Conclusions

Coping with a change in dietary behavior is one of the biggest transitional difficulties, and family members may need support to find their familiar food items and to continue their cultural food choice behavior in the local areas. Further researches with quantitative and qualitative analysis are needed to understand the effect of dietary behavior for acculturation in multicultural families.

Keywords: dietary behavior, nationality of marriage migrant women, multicultural family

Figures and Tables

Fig. 1

Research design model

kjcn-21-53-g001
Table 1

General characteristics of the study subjects according to 1st survey and 2nd FGI1)

kjcn-21-53-i001

1) FGI : Focus Group Interview

Table 2

Korea acculturation according to the nationality

kjcn-21-53-i002

1) Mean±SD

*: p < 0.05

a,b: significantly different at α=0.05 by Duncan's multiple range test

Table 3

Eating attitude according to the nationality

kjcn-21-53-i003

1) N (%)

2) Mean±SD

*: p < 0.05

a,b: significantly different at α=0.05 by Duncan's multiple range test

Table 4

Consideration for food choice behavior according to the nationality

kjcn-21-53-i004

1) N (%), Multiple response

*: p < 0.05

Table 5

Food choice behavior according to the nationality

kjcn-21-53-i005

1) N (%)

2) Mean±SD

*: p < 0.05

a,b: significantly different at α=0.05 by Duncan's multiple range test

Table 6

Correlation between the Korea Acculturation Pattern and Dietary Behavior (N=94)

kjcn-21-53-i006

*: p < 0.05

Table 7

Focus Group Interview (FGI) results according to the nationality

kjcn-21-53-i007

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant (14162MFDS133) from Ministry of Food and Drug safety in 2014.

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ORCID iDs

Myung-Hee Lee
https://orcid.org/http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9588-5408

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