Civic identity profiling: A comparative study of Hong Kong and Taiwan youth

Civic identity is a social construction that can take multiple forms amongst citizens of the same society. For young people, identity is a key part of their emergence from childhood to adolescence and subsequently to adulthood. There is seldom a common civic identity amongst youth in one society. While looking across societies of different historical and national background, the within-society difference is distinctively smaller than the across-society difference. In other words, the civic identities of youth from different societies differ vastly from those living in the same society. To some extent, the differences depend on how they interpret their social and political context. Their interpretation is often manifested as their current civic efficacy and activities and future civic and political participation. To outline Hong Kong and Taiwan young people’s efficacy, activities and future participation profiles that reflect features of the civic societies they live in, this study will be comparative in nature. The IEA International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) 2009 Hong Kong and Taiwan Grade 8 data, surveying students’ civic efficacy, activities, and future civic and political participation, will be used (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2010). This study will first construct an invariant measurement structure, i.e., a valid common measurement model, through Multiple Group Confirmative Factor Analysis (MGCFA). Given the social, political, and cultural differences between the Hong Kong and Taiwan societies, the multi-group measurement invariance analysis will shed light on a latent measurement structure indicative, if not generalizable, of the Asian societies, and worldwide. This study will move a step further to conduct latent mean analysis. The purpose is to compare how these two groups of students differ in multiple profiles of civic identity. The presumably differed identity profiles of the Hong Kong and Taiwan youth –may imply that much more effort is needed to understand identity construction and that identity education should be regarded at least as important as citizenship education.