Polish Adaptation of the Revised Multicultural Ideology Scale (MCI-r)

Abstract

As global migration continues to grow, its impact increasingly extends to Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, a country that remained culturally homogeneous for decades after World War II. With this growing cultural pluralism comes the need for an adequate and reliable instrument to measure endorsement of multiculturalism. The present study addresses this gap by adapting and validating the Revised Multicultural Ideology Scale (MCI-r) for use in Poland and examining its psychometric properties. The study was conducted in 2023 in two waves, approximately three weeks apart, on a nationally representative sample of Polish adults (N = 2,132) stratified by age, gender, and municipality size. Results were most consistent with a six factor structure (with one item removed), consistent with the theoretical specification of the construct but differing from the four-factor solutions typically found in Western European and Canadian samples. Confirmatory factor analyses supported configural, metric, and scalar invariance across the two waves of the study and across gender, and the scale demonstrated high test–retest stability. Moreover, the MCI-r showed clear predictive validity: stronger endorsement of multiculturalism was associated with more favorable attitudes toward war refugees from Ukraine and with lower social and, to a much lesser extent, economic conservatism. Overall, the MCI-r emerged as a positive and, in fact, the strongest predictor of attitudes toward Ukrainian refugees, providing a robust tool for monitoring diversity ideologies in contemporary Polish society.