Introducing a New Assessment Tool for Measuring Ethnic-Racial Identity: The Cross Ethnic-Racial Identity Scale–Adult (CERIS-A)

Abstract

In this article, we examined the psychometric properties of scores on a new instrument, the Cross Ethnic-Racial Identity Scale-Adult (CERIS-A) for use across different ethnic and racial groups. The CERIS-A measures seven ethnic-racial identity attitudes-assimilation, miseducation, self-hatred, anti-dominant, ethnocentricity, multiculturalist inclusive, and ethnic-racial salience. Participants consisted of 803 adults aged 18 to 76, including African Americans (19.3%), Asian Americans (17.6%), European Americans (37.0%), and Latino/as (17.8%). Analyses indicated that CERIS-A scores were reliable, and configural, metric, and scalar invariance were supported for the seven factors across gender; however, Miseducation, Ethnic-Racial Salience, and Ethnocentricity scores achieved only metric invariance across ethnic-racial groups. Self-Hatred, Ethnic-Racial Salience, Anti-Dominant, and Ethnocentricity scores were significantly and meaningfully related to race-based rejection sensitivity scores, providing evidence of convergent validity. We concluded that the CERIS-A is a potentially useful instrument for examining ethnic-racial identity attitudes across multiple racial/ethnic subgroups in the United States.

Incorporating a Race Salience Subscale Into the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS)

“…Although some of the fit indices for the six-factor structure were slightly better than those for the seven-factor structure, the fit coefficients for the seven-factor structure in both samples were strong and better than some fit indices for six-factor CRIS models in several former studies (e.g., Vandiver et al, 2002;Worrell & Watson, 2008). Fit indices for the seven-factor model in this study were also better than the fit indices for the CERIS-A (Worrell et al, 2019), which also includes a race salience scale.…”

“…It is possible that the willingness to engage African Americans and other ethnic-racial groups makes race less salient in this construct, as individuals are judged by their values and behaviors and not by their demographic group membership. The lack of an association between multicultural-inclusive and ethnic-racial salience attitudes on the CERIS-A for all ethnic groups (Worrell et al, 2019) provides support for this hypothesis.…”

“…We hypothesized that (a) race salience scores would be internally consistent (i.e., α < .70), (b), the five items would form a viable factor in the EFA, and (c) the seven-factor model of the CRIS would yield acceptable fit in the CFA analysis. As was found with the CERIS-A (Worrell et al, 2019), we expected that the fit indices would be lower for the seven-factor model than the six-factor model, given the greater model complexity, but we hypothesized that the seven-factor model would still have a good fit.…”

“…In recent work, the CRIS team developed the Cross Ethnic-Racial Identity Scale–Adult (CERIS-A; Worrell et al, 2016), which extends the measurement of the constructs assessed on the CRIS to Asian American, European American, and Latinx samples. On the CERIS-A, which was recently introduced to the literature (Worrell et al, 2019), ethnic-racial salience is defined as “the degree to which individuals consider race in their daily lives” (Worrell et al, 2019, p. 406), and this definition of racial salience is the one used in the current study.…”

Reframing Internalized Racial Oppression and Charting a way Forward

“…However, the broader racial identity clusters of attitudes did not correlate with decreased self‐esteem (Cross & Frost, ; Worrell, ). A new measure of racial identity made improvements in measuring self‐hatred and miseducation across multiple racial and ethnic groups responses with content not tied to specific stereotypes (Worrell, Mendoza‐Denton, & Wang, ). These findings suggest that while self‐hatred does not dominate Black racial identity, it plays a role in influencing identity.…”