Abstract

The purposes of this study were to develop Korean Social Identification Scale which measures the extent that an individual accept his/her membership of a social group as a part of self-concept and identify to the group and examine reliability, validity and factor structure of the scale. Based on the result of a factor analysis of the 361 college students' responses to a 30-item preliminary scale, a 19-item social identification scale was constructed. Three dimensions of social identification - group self-esteem, self-categorization and commitment to the group - could be distinguished as separate factors in a factor analysis of this scale. These results were cross-validated by an analysis of another 244 students' responses. The reliability of the three sub-scale(Cronbach's α=.78 ~ 84) was fairly high and both the convergent validity and divergent validity of the scale were satisfactory. As expected, the level of social identification was positively correlated with grade of student, participation in departmental events and staff career of students' association, respectively. Finally, necessity of further research on the factor structure of the scale and the theoretical and practical utility of the scale were discussed.