Ethnic identity , academic achievement , and self - esteem among Mexican - American university students

155 Identity is an issue of longstanding interest in the social sciences (e.g., Erikson, 1963; Marcia, 1980). It was Erikson (1968) who first gave prominence to the belief that the primary work of adolescence was to develop a stable sense of identity. While Erikson believed that the quest towards identity was a life long journey, he theorized that it began most forcefully in adolescence and continued to be of primary importance well into early adulthood. Although identity can be viewed as a unitary psychological construct, it is helpful to think of identity as having many dimensions. For example, an adolescent may develop an identity as a student, an athlete, a female/male, a son/ daughter, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a heterosexual/homosexual, an African-American/Irish-American, and so forth. For many individuals, ethnic identity1 is an important compo-