Measurement Model for Students’ Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Perception of Social Mobility in China: Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses

Zhenjie Yuan and Xia Li

SAGE Open, 2019, vol. 9, issue 2, 2158244019844093

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and construct validity of the Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Perception of Social Mobility Scale in China. The data for this study were collected in 2014 and 2016, from one middle school in China. The school deployed a Chinese ethnic minority education policy, aimed at cultivating youth elites who uphold the Chinese government. The educational process involved significant interventions in the students’ identity building and their perception of social mobility. The total sample of 338 students was recruited in 2014 for exploratory factor analysis (EFA), while 609 students were recruited in the same school in 2016 for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). EFA was first used to devise an optimal structure. The results of EFAs supported a two-factor solution to ethnic identity: commitment and exploration ; a three-factor solution for national identity: commitment, exploration , and behavioral involvement ; and a three-factor solution for perception of social mobility: sense of being elite, perception of social status , and educational attainment . The second step was to confirm the structure, using CFA methods. CFA showed that the eight-factor model for Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Perception of Social Mobility Scale provides a good fit for the data. These findings shed light on a combined way of approaching the relationship between identity building and social mobility within the educational sectors of a multi-ethnic society. Based on a Chinese context, this study offers a situated and contextualized quantitative approach to examining the Chinese state’s efforts toward identity building and promoting upward social mobility within the educational sector. Future research and the potential limitations of the study are discussed.

Keywords: ethnic identity; national identity; perception of social mobility; exploratory factor analysis; confirmatory factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244019844093 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:9:y:2019:i:2:p:2158244019844093

DOI: 10.1177/2158244019844093

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().