Structure of Ethnic Identity of Arab-Israeli Students

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Abstract
The main problems posed in this study were: What is the structure of the Arab-Israeli identity? What is the relation of ethnic identity to another self-referent scale? The Ethnic Identity and Self-esteem scales were administered in the summer of 1973–74 to 532 Arab-Israeli university students. Factor analysis of the items demonstrated that most of the common factor variance was appropriated by three factors, all of which were clearly recognized as already known constructs. Despite the peculiar situation of the Arab minority in Israel, two relatively orthogonal factors, an Arab identity and an Israeli identity, emerged while the other factor represented a self-esteem construct. These findings supported the conclusions of previous research on Jewish-American identity and raised questions about the notion that ethnic-majority identity forms a bipolar continuum. The ethnic identity is then discussed in relation to the broader concept of self-identity.

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