General interest magazine language preference among Hispanics

An experiment was conducted to determine if there was a relationship between the way language is presented in a magazine article and Hispanics' perceptions of the article. Two hundred and seventeen respondents in west Texas read articles in Spanish, English and a mix of English with Spanish. Subjects were given a questionnaire to identify their affinity toward the articles, their ability to understand the articles, and their perceptions of the news value of the articles. The ARSMA-II scale was used to evaluate respondent's level of acculturation. Data analysis revealed Hispanics preferred the articles written in English and the mix of English and Spanish to the articles written in Spanish alone. No relationship was found between level of acculturation and preference for language presentation style.