Adaptation of Multicultural Identity Styles Scale into Russian

Abstract

Background. Integration has been shown as the most adaptive acculturation strategy for ethnic minorities and immigrants. Still, there is a lack of understanding of how exactly an individual manages cultural identities in the process of integration and how this affects the success of adaptation. According to the concept of multicultural identity styles (Ward et al., 2018), an individual can manage their cultural identities either by blending them into a single consistent identity (hybrid identity style) or by switching between identities depending on social context (alternating identity style). This approach is promising in acculturation research and the translation and adaptation of the relevant methodology will allow its use in studies of the adaptation of Russian-speaking immigrants and ethnic minorities. Objectives. The goal is to adapt the Multicultural Identity Styles Scale into Russian. Methods. The authors made a direct and reverse translation of the methodology into Russian and the correction of items after the analysis of cognitive interviews. Then the authors assessed the factor structure of the questionnaire, its reliability, and construct validity based on the socio-psychological study conducted on a sample of 197 Russian Jews. The study was based on the Multicultural Identity Style Scale (Ward et al., 2018). To assess its construct validity, we used the Integration subscale of Acculturation attitudes scale from the MIRIPS (Mutual Intercultural Relations in Multicultural Societies) questionnaire (Berry, 2017), items to measure perceived ethno-national and religious-national identity incompatibility (Verkuyten, Martinovic, 2012) and a technique to measure perceived cultural distance (Galchenko, Van de Vijver, 2007). Results. The adapted version of the Multicultural Identity Styles Scale showed a two-factor structure (hybrid and alternating identity styles), which corresponds to the original scale. High reliability of the scales and construct validity, confirmed by correlations of the questionnaire subscales with other measures and discriminant validity relative to the integration scale were also confiemed. Conclusions. The Multicultural Identity Styles Scale has been successfully adapted into the Russian language and can be used in the studies of adaptation in Russian-speaking immigrants and ethnic minorities.

Keywords

• multicultural identity styles
• hybrid identity style
• alternating identity style
• integration
• psychological adaptation