Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do People Navigate Multiple Cultural Worlds?
Compare the two identity dimensions before interpreting their correlates.
Why you’re reading it. Distinguish how identities are related from how much someone participates in each tradition.
A question to consider. How might two equally bilingual people differ on harmony and blendedness?
Why this reading
Huynh and colleagues distinguish experiencing two cultural identities as harmonious from experiencing them as blended. Developing and evaluating a questionnaire makes that distinction available for measurement rather than leaving bicultural identity as a single label.
Before you read
A factor model asks whether patterns of responses support proposed dimensions. Measurement invariance asks whether items function comparably across groups. Neither test, by itself, demonstrates that a construct has the same meaning for every population.
Read for
- Follow item development, the exploratory/confirmatory sample split and the comparison of one- and two-factor models.
- Compare evidence for score reliability, group comparability and relationships with other constructs; these answer different questions.
Consider afterwards
- Could someone experience their cultural identities as distinct but harmonious? How would the two scales represent this?
- What further evidence would you require before using the instrument with older adults?
Editorial context
The main sample comprised 1,049 self-identified bicultural university students. Some fit indices were less favorable than others, and invariance conclusions were cautious. Ethnic diversity within one university does not establish universal applicability. Cross-sectional paths linking identity, stress and adjustment do not establish their causal order.