The Māori Cultural Embeddedness Scale (MaCES): Initial Evidence of Structural Validity

• Published in: Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology Vol. 29; no. 4; pp. 551 - 563
• Main Authors: Fox, Ririwai, Johnson, Finley Ngarangi, Winter, Taylor, Jose, Paul E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Educational Publishing Foundation 01-10-2023
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Confirmatory Factor Analysis; Cultural Identity; Culture; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Female; Human; Humans; Indigenous Populations; Male; Maori People; Middle Aged; New Zealand; Psychometrics; Rating Scales; Reproducibility of Results; Self Report; Surveys and Questionnaires - standards; Test Construction; Test Reliability; Test Validity; Young Adult; New Zealand; Māori; indigenous identity; cultural embeddedness; survey measure
• ISSN: 1099-9809; 1939-0106
• DOI: 10.1037/cdp0000590

Objectives: The purpose of this article is to introduce a self-report measure of cultural embeddedness for Māori (Māori Cultural Embeddedness Scale [MaCES]), which builds on theoretical and qualitative research on the concept. Method: A total of 548 adults who self-identified as Māori responded to 49 items that were designed to measure aspects of Māori Cultural Values, Beliefs, and Practices. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, and invariance was tested through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results: A total of six items were pruned from the measure for having low loadings on the latent factor, having ambiguous wording, and/or measuring contentious concepts. The remaining 43 items fit the data well when organized by three primary factors (i.e., Values, Beliefs, and Practices), further split into secondary subfactors. We also found that this nuanced subfactor model was invariant to sole/mixed identification as Māori, as well as growing up in urban or rural settings. We found evidence of structural validity for the MaCES, but ongoing validation, including convergent and divergent comparisons to other scales, is required in future work. Conclusions: The MaCES is a theoretically derived and statistically sound measure that offers significant research potential for exploring the various ways that embeddedness in Māori culture informs differential outcomes.
Public Significance Statement
Cultural identity is central to how a person feels about their lived experiences inside their cultural group. We argue that a critical part of a person's identity is their cultural embeddedness, which is formed through the internalization and embodiment of cultural values, beliefs, and practices. In this study, we describe our development of a self-report measure that enables Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, to characterize their cultural embeddedness along these three dimensions.