An exploratory development of a Bantu informed collective self-esteem scale for African American youth

Collective self-esteem is defined as the aspect of identity that relates to how one evaluates the value or worth of the social group to which they belong (Luttanen and Croker, 1992). For African American youth, little research has been conducted to understand how they assess the value or worth they place on their ethnic social grouping as opposed to their racial identity (Hecht, Jackson, & Ribeau, 2003). Moreover, African American scholars for decades have theorized about the importance of applying African centered frameworks to ground community solutions for these youth. Drawing from both the African centered and collective self-esteem literature, the purpose of the present study is to develop a measure of collective self-esteem derived from an African framework to examine its relationship with African American youths’ ethnic identity perceptions. The first phase of the study consisted of a content analysis to generate a pool of items derived from Bantu philosophical text. The second phase consisted of cognitive interviewing to understand the mental processing of African American youth answering the developed items. In the final phase, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify the factor structure of the tested items. A single factor was identified, which was strongly correlated with African American youth perceptions of ethnic belonging further supporting that self-perceptions amongst African American youth is associated with how they positively or negatively perceive their ethnic identity.