Would the Real Social Representation Please Stand Up? Three Levels of Analysis of Social Representations of European American and Mexican American Identity

Abstract

Basing this research on questionnaire data collected from 203 European Americans and 93 Mexican Americans residing in the south-west of the US, I will develop three incommensurate conclusions about their social representation of self- and ethnic identity. Despite the use of identical observations and variables, I will accomplish this by using different statistical, theoretical, and conceptual approaches. The divergence of results, despite using identical data, must be understood in two ways: first, identities and representations are far more complex than any one theory or method of the competing strands in the social sciences allows for at present. Second, despite using statistical methods, I will arrive at divergent results because of the way data was analysed. More generally, with this paper I intend to illustrate the complexity and some of the pitfalls of comparative research.