Venice Jardine, Brigham Young University
Within Psychology, there has recently been an influx of research involving Phinney’s theory of “Ethnic Identity Development.” This refers to the way in which youth and young adults acquire an individual self-concept that is largely dictated by their culture, and suggests that these stages of development are the same across cultures. Methodologies surrounding Ethnic Identity Development Theory rely most heavily on the use of surveys in order to gather data from various ethnic groups. While surveys and lab experiments may be able to provide reliability in testing, they do not entirely account for validity, especially when accounting for context-dependent phenomena such as culture or identity. Through conducting qualitative research among Hmong people in France and Thailand, I found that Hmong across generations do not follow the same line of ethnic identity development as proposed by Phinney, nor is the deeply complex construct of identity accounted for in the unilateral Ethnic Identity Development theory. Instead, I propose that the Life Course model is much better suited for studying identity development, as it is a more dynamic approach to studying human development surrounding identity as it occurs within varying cultural contexts.