Development and validation of the polycultural identity scale

Abstract

While globalisation brings opportunities for cultural enrichment, it may also present challenges as individuals attempt to make sense of and integrate fragmented and often conflicting cultural influences into a coherent self-concept. A qualitative inquiry into contemporary Australians' cultural identity experiences indicated that some people perceive themselves as a product of multiple influences from diverse contacts and learnings, and they mix and reconcile these influences into their self-concept. Building on this prior work, the current study developed and tested a new quantitative measure of polycultural identity. Using two diverse Australian samples (N = 301; N = 525) recruited from Prolific, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a single-factor structure and a high Cronbach's α among the final 10 items. Correlational analyses revealed that, as expected, the Polycultural Identity Scale (PIS) was more strongly linked with the endorsement of polycultural ideology than multicultural ideology and was uncorrelated with colourblind ideology. Also, as expected, the PIS correlated moderately with generalised identity blendedness, interest in diverse contact and endorsement of global citizenship but not with identity compartmentalisation or generalised identity harmony. The PIS has the potential to provide valuable insights into the dynamics of multifaceted cultural identity and how individuals organise and synthesise a breadth of cultural influences into a meaningful self-concept.