Multiple Social Identities in Relation to Self-Esteem of Adolescents in Post-communist Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Romania

Abstract

We test a model linking ethnic, familial, and religious identity to self-esteem among youth in Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Romania. All countries are post-communist nations in Europe, offering novel and underexplored settings to study identity. Participants were 880 adolescents (mean age, 15.93 years; SD, 1.40) with Albanian (n = 209), Bulgarian (n = 146), Czech (n = 306), Kosovan (n = 116), and Romanian (n = 103) background who filled in an Ethnic Identity Scale (Dimitrova et al., 2016), familial and religious identity scales adapted from the Utrecht Management of Identity Commitment Scales [U-MICS; Crocetti et al. Child and Youth Care Forum, 40, 7–23 (2011); Crocetti et al. Assessment, 1, 2–16 (2015)], and the Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale [Rosenberg, Conceiving the self. Basic Books, New York (1979)]. A multigroup path model showed that ethnic, familial, and religious identities were significantly positively related to a single underlying construct of social identities. In all countries, youth with a stronger multiple identities reported higher self-esteem. These results are particularly valuable in addressing the scope of the proposed book by providing new knowledge on multiple social identities among under investigated samples from post-communist countries in Europe faced with dynamic societal changes. They also mirror increasing attention on multiple, inclusive, and intersectional identities as psychological assets for young generations.