Children's Understanding of Ethnic Group Symbols: Piloting an Instrument in the Republic of North Macedonia

Assessing children's awareness of ethnic identity and group boundaries is important in conflict-affected societies. For example, in the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM), tense interethnic relations remain and can be seen in the largely separate living patterns, particularly in schools. This brief report analyses data from 194 children (57.7% female, 42.3% male; 45.9% Macedonian, 54.1% Albanian) in primary school. A series of one-sample t tests, with Bonferroni correction, demonstrate the viability of a new quantitative tool for measuring children's awareness of symbols relevant to interethnic relations in RNM. The findings indicate that primary school-age children can sort both ingroup and outgroup symbols with the hypothesized ethnic group. Moreover, ethnic awareness is present among the earliest school grades and increases with age. This approach may be used in future research and adapted in other conflict-affected settings to better understand the foundations of children's interethnic attitudes and behaviors. Public Significance Statement This paper investigates children's awareness of conflict-related groups, including patterns across primary school years and by majority/minority status. Future research can utilize the identified salient category symbols in experimental designs. The instrument may also be used in future studies linking ethnic awareness to intergroup attitudes and behaviors or adapted to other conflict-affected societies.