The Ethnic Adornment Survey (EAS): Measuring Individuals’ Use of Clothing to Express Ethnic Identity

ABSTRACT

The present paper introduces the Ethnic Adornment Survey as a measure of the relative frequency with which individuals use clothing to express their ethnic identity. Results of exploratory factor analyses in a pilot study (n = 174) and confirmatory factor analyses in a main study (n = 217) revealed that the Ethnic Adornment Survey measures two positively correlated, yet distinct, ethnic adornment factors (i.e., socially desirable and undesirable aspects). Moreover, results of regression analyses indicated that (1) self-esteem was positively predicted by socially desirable aspects of ethnic adornment (p’s < .05 in both studies); whereas (2) self-esteem was negatively predicted by socially undesirable aspects of ethnic adornment (p’s < .05 in the pilot study and < .10 in the main study). Implications for research on ethnic identity are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic adornment
• ethnic identity
• self-esteem
• exploratory factor analysis
• confirmatory factor analysis

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Samira Abdullahi, Adilah Ali, Sabheen Iqbal, Donnieve Miller, Isabel Park, Maya Philip, and Deekshana Ranganathan for their help in collecting data for the present paper. In addition, the authors wish to thank Editor Renee Galliher and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments regarding earlier versions of the paper. Please address all correspondence to: Stanley O. Gaines, Jr., College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, United Kingdom (phone [phone], e-mail [email protected]).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.