Define ethnic identity before you fill it in

Concepts for the next hour

The meaning

Concept: The construct

What it means: The meaning they attach to the people they belong to. Phinney and Ong (2007) describe it as a sense of peoplehood within a group, a culture, and a setting. The checkbox is not that meaning.

Question to ask a client: When you use that name for yourself, what does it mean to you, not to the form and not to your family?

Ethnic identification

Concept: Ethnic identification

What it means: The name itself. The ethnic identification definition stops at the label. It does not tell you whether they have looked, or whether they belong.

Question to ask a client: What name do you want me to use for your people, including if the intake already picked one?

Unexamined

Concept: Unexamined

What it means: In Phinney’s 1989 interviews, diffusion and foreclosure were the adolescents who had not explored. They may have a story. They have not tested it.

Question to ask a client: Is that account one you chose, or one you inherited and have not looked at?

Search

Concept: Search

What it means: Moratorium in that study. They are looking, and they are not committed yet. A search is not a crisis you have to close before the hour ends.

Question to ask a client: What started the looking, and what are you still unsure of?

Achieved

Concept: Achieved

What it means: They have explored, and they have committed. In that tenth-grade study, this group scored higher on ego identity and on adjustment. That finding is not a target you assign.

Question to ask a client: What did you have to look at before you could say this is yours?

Exploration

Concept: Exploration

What it means: One half of the revised MEIM. Effort to learn the group, and to take part in its practices. It is not a homework task you invent for them.

Question to ask a client: What have you done, lately, to learn how your people handle this?

Commitment

Concept: Commitment

What it means: The other half. A clear sense of belonging, and a tie to the group that is theirs. How central it is today is not a trait score you file.

Question to ask a client: How much does belonging here matter in the problem you brought in?

How they are treated

Concept: How they are treated

What it means: Phinney and Ong (2007) distinguish the construct from racial identity, and they note that both involve belonging and learning about one’s group. In that paper, research on racial identity has focused on responses to racism. How the client is treated is not a Phinney stage.

Question to ask a client: Are you talking about heritage and practice, or about how you are treated? I can stay with either. I do not want to mix them.

Define ethnic identity

When a supervisee asks, give them the meaning, not the checkbox. Phinney and Ong (2007) call it a multidimensional construct that develops through exploration and commitment. They write that it derives from a sense of peoplehood within a group, a culture, and a particular setting. Knowledge of the affiliation is part of it. Knowledge is not the whole.

The ethnic identification definition is the smaller piece. It is the name. A client can name a people and still be unexamined, still searching, or already committed. If you write the name and stop, you have recorded the label and missed the work.

Phinney (1990) reviewed 70 studies and said the common elements across groups were the workable focus, because what is unique to one group does not travel. Use that as a limit. You do not explain this person with a group fact you learned somewhere else.

Phinney’s three stages

The stage names come from interviews, not from a manual you can score in the chart. Phinney (1989) interviewed 91 American-born tenth-graders in integrated urban high schools: Asian American, Black, Hispanic, and White, in the study’s words. Minority students were coded into one of three stages. White students could not be reliably coded.

Among the minority students in that sample, about half had not explored (diffusion or foreclosure). About a quarter were in exploration (moratorium). About a quarter had explored and committed (achieved). The process looked similar across those three groups. The issues each group faced did not. Students who had achieved scored highest on a separate ego-identity measure and on psychological adjustment, in that study.

Use the stages as a way to hear where the account is. Do not use the 1989 split as a base rate in your caseload. Do not skip the question because a client presents as White. That study could not code those students. The later measure was built so the question could be asked across groups. Ask.

Stage in the 1989 study	What you are hearing	What you do not do
Unexamined	A story they have not tested	Treat the story as finished
Search	Looking, not yet committed	Rush them to a label
Achieved	Explored, then committed	Assign it as a wellness goal

The MEIM, and what you do not score

Phinney (1992) built the MEIM from elements common across groups, so the same questions could be asked across groups. The questionnaire went to 417 high school students and 136 college students in ethnically diverse schools. Reliability was .81 in the high school sample and .90 in the college sample.

Phinney and Ong (2007) describe that 1992 measure as 14 items on attachment, achieved identity, and ethnic practices, plus 6 items on orientation to other groups. Those 6 are a separate construct. Liking other groups is not belonging. Do not add them into the score and call the total belonging.

The same 2007 paper presents a revision, the MEIM-R: 6 items, 3 on exploration and 3 on commitment. Exploration is the effort to learn and to take part. Commitment is the sense of belonging and the tie. If you use the revision, report Exploration and Commitment subscale means. The paper also permits a whole-scale mean. Do not treat the score as a clinical stage.

Do not reproduce the items from memory and call the result the MEIM. The published scale is the scale. A paraphrase in your note is your question, which is allowed, and it is not a score. If a score will not change the hour, do not give the form.

Belonging is not how they are treated

Phinney (1996) wrote that an ethnic category, by itself, explains little. She named three aspects: cultural norms and values; the strength, salience, and meaning of belonging; and the experiences and attitudes associated with minority status. She treated them as dimensions people vary on, not as categories you classify them into.

Aspect she named	Question you ask	Do not collapse it into
Cultural norms and values	How does your family do this?	Their belonging
Strength, salience, and meaning	Have you looked, and do you belong?	A cause for the symptom
Experiences and attitudes of minority status	How are you treated, and what do you make of that?	A Phinney stage

If the client is talking about being racialized or how they are treated, stay with what happened. Do not assume every racial-identity question is only a minority-status experience, and do not translate it into a Phinney stage. Do not translate a heritage answer into a story about how people like them are treated.

Two neighboring jobs are not this question in disguise.

If the miss was yours, and you filled a silence with a group fact, the stance to practice is cultural humility. Self-critique does not supply their account of belonging.

After the door closes, a short look at whether you filled in the meaning belongs with reflective practice for therapists. The question in the next hour is still theirs.

If they went quiet after you named the group, treat the quiet as a possible rupture. The repair lives on the therapeutic relationship page. Do not upgrade the quiet into a stage.

A line you can say this week

Second session. They said the family name, then said they were not sure they counted. You can feel the pull to explain what that name is supposed to mean. Do not.

Log the try where you will see it. One focus, one line you will say, one reading, and a monthly note on whether you said it. The reading can be the peoplehood paragraph in Phinney and Ong (2007), or the stage descriptions in the 1989 paper. The line is the one you can say before Friday.

The one-page plan is yours. It is not a supervision score, and it is not a client note. Client initials do not belong on a craft file you might leave on a desk. The file that holds the try is the professional development plan for therapists.

What you write, and what you do not score

The chart can hold the name they want used, and a fact they corrected. It should not hold a stage number, and it should not hold a group stereotype because a chapter named it.

Useful: “Client wants the name Mexican. Said they are unsure they count. Clarified this as belonging, not as how they are sorted. Plan: ask what they have looked at, before interpreting the name.”

Not useful: “Stage: achieved, 4/5.” That number does no clinical work. It also pretends a research stage is a measure you administered.

Copy the blank lines when you are choosing the try, not when you are writing the note.

Download the one-page plan

Put the focus on one question. Put the try on one line you will actually say. Put the reading on the 2007 peoplehood paragraph, or on the 1989 stage descriptions, not on a pile you will not open. A no is allowed. Changing the question is allowed. Pretending you asked is what turns the page into theater.

The note can be drafted for you. The question cannot. If you already keep session notes in the clinician console, the name they want used still has to come from them. A scribe does not notice that you filled in the meaning.

References

• Phinney, J. S. (1989). Stages of ethnic identity development in minority group adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 9(1-2), 34-49.
• Phinney, J. S. (1990). Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: Review of research. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 499-514.
• Phinney, J. S. (1992). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2), 156-176.
• Phinney, J. S. (1996). When we talk about American ethnic groups, what do we mean?. American Psychologist, 51(9), 918-927.
• Phinney, J. S., & Ong, A. D. (2007). Conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity: Current status and future directions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54(3), 271-281.