A Brief Form of the Ethnic Identity Scale: Development and Empirical Validation

Theory and research have long indicated that ethnic-racial identity is a complex and multifaceted construct. However, there is a paucity of brief, easily administered measures that adequately capture this multidimensionality. Two studies were conducted to develop an abbreviated version of the Ethnic Identity Scale (EIS) and to explore its psychometric properties in the United States. In Study 1, the use of item-reduction techniques with a sample of adolescent Latinos (n = 323) resulted in a 9-item brief version of the EIS (EIS-B), including subscales of Exploration, Resolution, and Affirmation; furthermore, longitudinal analyses provided initial support for the construct validity of the subscales. In Study 2, the factor structure of the EIS-B was examined among an ethnically diverse sample of college students (n = 9,492), and findings provided support for strong measurement invariance across ethnic groups for the EIS-B. Together, findings from both studies provided preliminary evidence for the validity and reliability of the EIS-B as a brief measure of the multidimensional construct of ethnic-racial identity, and indicated that the EIS-B assessed ethnic-racial identity in a comparable manner to the original version of the scale.