EVALUATING RELATIONSHIP AMONG RELIGIOSITY, SELF-ESTEEM, AND IDENTIFICATION WITH TURKISH IDENTITY THROUGH STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODEL

• Main Authors: Fatih ÖZDEMİR, Ezher GÖZÜN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Social Sciences Research Society 2013-07-01
• Series: International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanity Studies
• Online Access: http://www.sobiad.org/eJOURNALS/journal_IJSS/arhieves/IJSS_2013_2/fatih_ozdemir.pdf

Social identity theory (Tajfel Turner, 1979) is commonly used in socialpsychology field since the late 1970s for explaining the person’s sense of who Iam. It provides a theoretical approach to identification with Turkish identity asnational identity. Conservatism and religiosity aremain values/norms of Turkishculture (Cagaptay, 2006; Imamoglu, 2002; Hofstede,2001), and they influencesocial behaviors of Turkish population. Also, according to social identity theory,identification with a positive social group, and internalizing its norms or valueshave a positive effect on the person’s self-concepts (Tajfel, 1978). Therefore itcan be said, this identification will increase theself-esteem level of groupmember. Moreover, the effects of demographic variables on individual’s socialbehaviors cannot be ignored as political affiliation, ethnic identity, education, age,sex and income. In this study, authors have analyzed relationship among thesevariables in different way, and have tested predictive power of religiosity, andself-esteem on identification with Turkish identity. Study has been performedwith Middle East Technical University students (N=341) and Religious AttitudeScale (Ok, 2011), Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and Social Identity Scale(Cinnirella, 1998) are main materials. In order tofigure out the effects ofreligiosity, and self-esteem on identification withTurkish identity, authors havecreated a structural equation model. Firstly, theyhave tested their measurementmodel. Confirmatory factor analysis has yielded good fit of the confirmatorymodel in the data [χ2 (24, N = 341) = 30.23, p=.17, RMSEA = .03, GFI =.98,AGFI = .96, CFI =1, NNFI = .99]. In addition, the structural model has yieldedgood fit of the structural model in the data [χ2 (17, N = 341) = 19.19, p=.32,RMSEA = .02, GFI = .99, AGFI = .97, CFI =1, NNFI =1]. Religiosity, and self-esteem have significantly predicted identificationwith Turkish identity.