Societal Applications
Ethnic and national identity
A prominent arena of application of ISA is the assessment of ethnic and national identity processes especially in multi-cultural contexts and cross-culturally. Research includes comparative studies of minority ethnic and mainstream identities in Britain, Northern Irish sectarian identities, cross-ethnic identification, alienated identities, identity processes in Slovakia, Estonia, Israel, Beijing and Hong Kong. These studies use customised identity instruments generated to incorporate local ethnographic features.
Gender identity
Gender features as a dominant theme throughout investigations of every kind of identity issue in society. Many projects using ISA are specifically directed to assessing gender identity processes in a variety of contexts, including academia itself, as in the identity of professional academic women compared with men.
Entrepreneurial identity
Comparative research using ISA on the development of entrepreneurial identity by females and males engaged with small business start-ups illuminates the different orientations of women to the dilemma of combining childrearing and business.