title: Investigating the structure and measurement invariance of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure in a multiethnic sample of college students.
abstract: In this article, we evaluate the factor structure of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM; Phinney, 1992) and test whether the MEIM exhibits measurement invariance across ethnic groups taken from a diverse sample of students from 30 different colleges and universities across the United States (N = 9,625). Initial analyses suggested that a bifactor model was an adequate representation of the structure of the MEIM. This model was then used in subsequent invariance tests. Results suggested that the MEIM displayed configural and metric invariance across 5 diverse ethnic groups (i.e., White, Black, Hispanic, East Asian, and South Asian). There were indications that the MEIM displayed a similar factor structure with roughly equivalent factor loadings across diverse ethnic groups. However, there was little evidence of scalar invariance across these groups, suggesting that mean-level comparisons of MEIM scores across ethnic groups should be interpreted with caution. The implications of these findings for the interpretation and use of this popular measure of ethnic identity are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Michigan State University.
authors.forename: Stevie C Y
authors.initials: SCY
authors.lastname: Yap
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Michigan State University.
authors.forename: M Brent
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Donnellan
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.
authors.forename: Seth J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, School of Human Ecology, The University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Su Yeong
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University.
authors.forename: Linda G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Castillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Smith College.
authors.forename: Byron L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Zamboanga
authors.affiliation: Liberal Studies Department, California State University, Monterey Bay.
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Weisskirch
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Indiana University.
authors.forename: Irene J K
authors.initials: IJK
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
authors.forename: Susan Krauss
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Whitbourne
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Sciences, University of Kentucky.
authors.forename: Alexander T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Vazsonyi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D012933:Social Identification; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult