Evaluation of the ethnic identity scale among Mapuche adolescents in Chile

Abstract

Recent studies evidence that ethnic identity is a protective factor for interethnic and intercultural so-cieties with unequal relations. The tools that measure ethnic identity have limited psychometric vali-dations for indigenous Chilean and Latin American populations. This study evaluated the psychome-tric properties of the ethnic identity scale with a sample of Mapuche indigenous adolescents consis-ting of 501 students with an average age of 15.63, through which exploratory and confirmatory facto-rial analyses were performed. The factorial assessment results showed strong internal reliability. The suitability of the three factors included in the theoretical proposal (exploration, resolution and affir-mation) explained 76% of the variance. The reliability measures indicated a .90 value for the ordinal alpha and the correlations demonstrated external validity. It is concluded that the EIS presents suffi-cient psychometric evidence for use in the Mapuche adolescent population.