The first factor was identified as value placed on common goals and projects over individual ones. Items include:

In order to be a real Tongan, one must…

One cannot be truly Tongan if one does not…

The issues bundled into this factor concern cooperation, mutual aid, and sharing; all the items are concerned with the common good and orderly society as people know it to have been in the past and mostly still want it to be today. Giving to church, to family events and rituals such as funerals—including having and bringing koloa faka-Tonga appropriately, donating to schools and village projects both in one’s village of origin and in the place one presently resides—are all ways in which one shows oneself to be a part of a greater collective, hence having certain obligations. Similarly, attending a Tongan church, as opposed to a pālangi one, is to acknowledge responsibility to the social circle in which one grew up. The idea that a person must share like a Tongan to be identifiably Tongan encompasses this factor. The broad statement here is that Tongans take responsibility for their part within the social groups in which they participate. To show faka’apa’apa to the King, and the hou’eiki (high ranking people, i.e. nobles) also shows that one knows one’s place in society. The King and the hou’eiki, among other things, are symbols of social order and centres for expressing social loyalty, and to be part of the group led by them is to have responsibilities within that group. To say it is important to faka’apa’apa to the hou’eiki is not so different from saying that it is important to contribute to one’s village or to funerals in one’s extended family—contributing appropriately to one’s place within social order.

The second factor identified represents value placed on maintaining family relationships and cultural continuity. Items include:

Over the course of a lifetime, these things are the responsibilities of all Tongans…

These items are about a kind of cultural continuity, including continuity in family structure and gender roles. The answers describe the socio-cultural environment that is comfortable for people. The importance of visiting family and hosting family when they visit, shows that family relations are not broken by international borders or distances. That people gave similar answers to the desirability of boys learning to farm, and girls learning to weave and make ngatu suggest that cultural change, especially that affecting gendered work and continuity with the past, is unattractive to most people. That young people should learn to be good dancers fits in with that—‘traditional’ Tongan skills are still valued. The importance of knowing about family and Tongan history also fit neatly into this category of important ways to maintain continuity with the past. Likewise, attending church is an important way to reproduce cultural values and to ensure a degree of conformity with the past.

The third factor meeting the criteria represents appropriate faka’apa’apa in everyday face-to-face relationships. Items include:

These are important parts of being Tongan…

This is about faka’apa’apa on a more personal scale. It is about knowing one’s place in one’s own family and immediate social circumstances, and enacting that knowledge appropriately through one’s relations with those others.

The fourth factor represents obvious aspects of Tongan identity. Items are:

In order to be a real Tongan, one must…

These are the most obvious, maybe most emotional, outward aspects of identity. Whether or not you can know if someone feels like a Tongan in their heart, you can always judge them by what goes into their mouths and what comes out. Living in Tonga is also one of those obvious signs of identity. Dancing is a fun, public mark of Tongan identity, especially overseas. Dancing is emotionally compelling and because the Tongan version is so difficult to do, competence or excellence at it definitely says something about a person.

The fifth factor represents comparing quality and character of life in Tonga and overseas. Items are:

Each of these items asks people to compare life in Tongan with life overseas: where people have a better life, where people are more content and whether island Tongans are ‘more Tongan’ than overseas Tongans.

The sixth factor identified represents attitudes about the hou’eiki as a people. Items are:

All these items speak about people’s perceptions of hou’eiki in terms of how they behave in the contemporary TTS. This is distinct from more diffusely held ideas about faka’apa’apa more generally as a concept or ideal.

The seventh factor represents iconic aspects of Tongan identity.

Tongans are Tongans because they…

The items dealing with Tongans returning to Tonga, putting family before self and being thoughtfully generous are all three characteristics of anga faka-Tonga (the ‘Tongan way’) that both Tongans and almost any outside analyst who has ever been to Tonga would readily recognise as primary identifying characteristics of anga faka-Tonga. This makes them characteristically different from the obvious ethnic markers in Factor Four, which are also readily understood as characteristically Tongan, but are more superficial aspects of Tongan identity and daily life than these foundations of identity and social organisation and interaction.

In Figure 7-1 we see the relative weighting of evaluation for each factor by the entire sample. Though this graph does not control for any independent variable, it is interesting if not definitive. In this graph ‘5’ indicates a strong commitment to the underlying elements contained within the factor, ‘3’ is an indication of neutrality, while anything under ‘3’ indicates a negative evaluation. It is worth noting here that the most esteemed factor is that of appropriate faka’apa’apa in everyday face-to-face relationships, while the least is attitudes about the hou’eiki as a people. The next step in our analysis was to use the factors identified here to examine variation within the total sample. To do this a number of key characteristics of the respondents were chosen for examination. These ‘independent variables’ were used to investigate whether there were any statistically significant effects of gender, age, education, church membership, or residence patterns as described below.