Abstract Background:

Married university students sit at a special life intersection where identity formation overlaps with school, marriage, and family duties. Looking at self-identity in this setting could, in a way, offer real clues into psychological empowerment, even if the picture is not always simple.

Objectives:

This study aimed to gauge the self-identity and psychological empowerment of married university students in Jordan. It also aimed to see how these ideas relate to each other and to check how much self-identity adds to psychological empowerment after taking demographic and marital factors into account.

Methods:

A cross-sectional correlational survey design was used, which is straightforward but not real. The study involved 456 married university students recruited from a mix of public and private universities across Jordan. Self-identity was checked through an adapted multidimensional instrument based on Eriksonian and Marcian identity views. The study used an Arabic-adapted version of the Psychological Empowerment Scale for psychological empowerment, which includes meaning, competence, selfdetermination, and impact. The data was then analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients and then simple and hierarchical linear regression analyses. So overall pretty standard but a bit layered.

Results:

Participants showed moderately high levels of self-identity (M = 3.78, SD = 0.60) and psychological empowerment (M = 3.65, SD = 0.60). Self-identity correlated positively with overall psychological empowerment (r = .54, p < .001) and also with meaning (r = .47), competence (r = .50), self-determination (r = .41), and impact (r = .44). In the simple regression, self-identity significantly predicted psychological empowerment (β = .54, p < .001) and explained 29% of the variance (R² = .29). In the hierarchical regression, self-identity remained a meaningful predictor even after controlling for demographic and marital variables (β = .52, p < .001), and it added another 25% to the explained variance (ΔR² = .25).

Conclusion:

Overall, self-identity had a significant link with psychological empowerment among married university students in Jordan, which points to how relevant it is for understanding both their academic life and marriage-related role experiences.