Different methodologies in the assessment of identity: Congruence between self-report and interview techniques?

Convergent-divergent validity and reliability estimates for clinical interview and self-report measures of ego identity were obtained. Twenty-three males and 25 females completed an extended version of the Ego Identity Interview [H. D. Grotevant, W. Thorebecke, and M. C. Meyer (1982) An Extension of Marcia's Identity Status Interview into the Interpersonal Domain,Journal of Youth and Adolescence 11: 33–48] and the extended version of the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status [H. D. Grotevant and G. R. Adams (1984) Development of an Objective Measure to Assess Ego-Identity in Adolescence: Validation and Replication,Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 13: 419–438]. While the two measures were expected to converge, little convergence was observed. The findings suggest that the two measures may be (a) assessing relatively distinct forms of ego identity, or (b) that the ego-identity construct as measured by the process (exploration) and outcome (commitment) dimensions needs further theoretical examination.Partial support for this project was provided through fundings to the second author from the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station, Logan, Utah. This paper was presented earlier in a symposium titled Identity Development from Adolescence to Adulthood at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research on Child Development, Toronto, Canada, April 1985.Received M.S degree in Psychology from Utah State University. Research interests include identity development and social relations.Received Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1975. Research interests include personality and social development in adolescence, family psychology, and research methodology.     

The Role of Gender in Adolescent Identity and Intimacy Decisions

This study explored the relative importance of identity and intimacy in male and female adolescent decisions. One hundred twenty adolescents responded to 16 identity/intimacy dilemmas. Females had higher identity (and lower intimacy) scores than males. Identity scores were higher in scenarios with female protagonists. A content analysis of decision explanations showed females gave more explanations than males with identity and intimacy fused. Implications for theories of psychosocial development are discussed.     

Book review

Women in post‐Soviet society

Anna Rotkirch, Elina Haavio‐Mannila, eds. Women's Voices in Russia Today (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Co., 1996), pp. xii + 266. ISBN 1–85521–679–5, £39.50.

Hilary Pilkington, ed. Gender, Generation and Identity in Contemporary Russia (London: Routledge, 1996), xii + 306 pp. ISBN 0–415–13544–3, £14.99.     

Identity six years after: A follow-up study

Thirty male subjects, given identity status interviews 6–7 years previously, were reinterviewed for identity status, as well as intimacy status, life style, and participation in the 1969–1970 campus demonstrations. High identity status appeared more vulnerable to change than did low. The Moratorium status showed a 100% change rate. The establishment of intimate relationships was related both to previous identity status (when that status remained stable) and to current identity status. In life style, Identity Achievement and Moratorium subjects were open; Foreclosure subjects were closed; and Identity Diffusion subjects tended to be diffuse. Subjects currently high in identity tended to feel more positively about and participated more in the 1969–1970 demonstrations than did lower identity status subjects. A new status, Foreclosure/Diffusion, is described. The theoretical anomaly of Identity Achievement and Moratorium subjects moving into the Foreclosure status has led to the suggestion of a process, as opposed to typological, approach to identity. Brief sketches of individuals as they currently appear in the identity statuses conclude the study.This research was supported by a President's Research Fund Grant from Simon Fraser University.Portions of this article were presented at the 1975 EPA Convention in New York City.Received his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 1964. Presently Professor of Psychology, Simon Fraser University. Research interests are in construct validation of ego psychoanalytic theory.     

Identity development in interracial,Asian/white late adolescents: Must it be so problematic?

The present study examines the extent to which Asian/white late adolescents are an at-risk group whose identity development is significantly different from Asian or white identity development. The centrality of race and ethnicity to Asian/white identity formation is also explored. Fifty-one Asian/white, Asian, and white college students were administered Marcia's Identity Interview (1966), with a section on race, and Mar's Asian Values Scale (1988). Asian/white subjects did not possess significantly different identity statuses than Asians or whites. Asian/white subjects held values similar to Asians on the Asian Values Scale, but rated race as significantly less important in identity formation than did Asian subjects. In some contexts, then, Asian/white subjects may not be as at-risk as previously thought. In the present study, Asian/whites had positively resolved racial issues such that race was no longer a matter of daily contention.This research was done as part of the requirement for the B.A. with Honors degree in Psychology from Amherst College.Current research interests include cross-cultural psychology and family relationships.     

Emotional Variables in Adolescence,and Their Stability and Contribution to the Mental Health of Adult Men: Implications for Early Intervention Strategies

This longitudinal study documented the stability of the emotional of a sample of males from adolescence (age 14) through young adulthood (age 19) and into middle adulthood (age 48). Using the Offer Self-image Questionnaire (OSIQ), the Hess and Henry Identity Test, and the Symptoms Checklist (SCL-90), distinct emotional traits were found in 67 adolescent males that were important in determining their mental health status in adult life (age 48). The results clearly demonstrated that certain adolescent emotional states tend to remain a problem in adulthood as well. Intervention work that could be done in order to change any adverse trajectories set by these variables was discussed.     

Family Factors in the Ego Development of Adolescent Girls

Thirty-nine adolescent girls, 16–19 years, were observed together with their 2 parents at a family discourse about moral and family issues on which they disagreed, to study interaction and conflict handling in families with daughters at different levels of ego development. Family interactions were coded by the Constraining and Enabling Coding System, ego development by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test and handling of internal conflict by Bond Defense Style Questionaire. Daughters' ego development was predicted by parental cognitive and affective enabling, but not by constraining communications. Fathers' cognitive and affective enabling transactions and mothers' affective enabling transactions contributed to the explained variance in the adolescents' ego development when daughters' age, parents' SES and ego development were controlled for in hierarchical regression analyses. Parents' ego levels were related to their enabling transactions, which also predicted daughters' ego levels, suggesting that especially enabling parenting behavior may play a mediating role. Mothers' challenging behavior toward daughters and parental autonomy from responding in kind to daughters' communications were also related to high ego levels in daughters.     

Empire in Question: Reading,Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism,Antoinette Burton

Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, by John L. Idol, Jr. and Melinda M. Ponder. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1999.

Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women's Fiction, 1885–1914, by Kate McCullough. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.

Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth‐Century Feminism, by Margaret H. McFadden. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 1999.

Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850–1930, by Martha J. Cutter. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion, by Missy Dehn Kubitschek. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Contentions Traditions: The Debate On Sati in Colonial India, by Lata Mani. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998.

The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects, by Rita S. Kranidis. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Strange Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, by Carole G. Silver. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Contexts, edited by Shannon Hengen. Studies in Humor and Gender. 4. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998.

Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re‐Visions in Literature and Performance, edited by Marianne Novy. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.     

Ego identity formation in middle adolescence

Assumed determinants of ego identity were investigated in this study using sophomore, junior, and senior high school males and females. Subjects were administered the Marcia Ego Identity Status Scale and measures of sex-role identification, personality development, psychological functioning, self-concept, and parental socialization practices. Data analyses, using a median split on identity score, showed that high-identity adolescents obtained more positive scores on sex-role identification, personality development, psychological adjustment, and self-concept than low-identity adolescents. Socialization practices also differed for the two groups. The sex differences which emerged were congruent with the identity literature. Overall, the data supported Erikson's theory of ego identity development.This study was funded by Grant No. 791-01-010-502 from the Senate Research Committee, University of Nebraska at Omaha.Received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Major interests are in the area of social and personality development in children and adolescents.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, September 1975.     

Academic Lionesses

Vivid Dreams

Michèle Roberts, Flesh and Blood, London: Virago, 1994, £14.99 (paper 1995, £6.99).

Living and Losing

Stevie Davies, Closing the Book, London: The Women's Press, 1994, £12.99, £6.99 pbk.

Secondhand Roles: What's So New about Fetishism ?

Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen, Female Fetishism: A New Look, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1994.

De‐mystifying Mysticism

Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

Sarah Beckwith, Christ's Body. Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings, London: Routledge, 1993.     

The relationship of values to identity achievement status

Each of 61 college undergraduates was classified as a high or low scorer based on his score on the Simmons Identity Achievement Status (IAS) scale. Ss from each group also ranked Rokeach's terminal and instrumental values in order of importance. The finding of differential ranking of several values by the high and low IAS Ss was congruent with Erikson's statements regarding the constructs of ego identity and identity diffusion and, in addition, seemed to lend further validity to the IAS scale.Received Ph.D. in 1968 from Syracuse University in the area of school psychology. Major areas of interest are socialization; personalty development in children and adolescents.     

The Role of Epistemic Cognition in Adolescent Identity Formation: Further Evidence

Following Boyes and Chandler (1992), it is investigated how adolescents’ epistemic understanding relates to the process of identity formation. In a cross-sectional as well as longitudinal study, identity status scores of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and identity achievement as assessed by the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were analyzed as a function of adolescents’ epistemic stance, while simultaneously taking into account individual differences in identity processing styles. The cross-sectional sample was composed of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (mean age: 16.2 years, SD = 2.41). The longitudinal study consisted of 134 participants (mean age at retest: 16.5 years, SD = 1.7) and covered a time interval of 18 months. Findings confirmed the view that the development of epistemic cognition contributes to adolescent identity formation. Specifically, the development of a multiplistic epistemic stance predicted higher moratorium scores, whereas the more advanced evaluativist epistemic position contributed to identity achievement over time. These effects were not due to individual differences in identity processing style.     

Broad Anthology on Situated Health Studies

Feminist science and technology studies — a challenge to science and to feminism?

Lynda Birke, Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew. 167pp. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994.

Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 239 pp. London/New York: Routledge, 1993.

Londa Schiebinger, Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. 289 pp. Boston: Beacon Press 1993.

Nelly Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones. 195 pp. London/New York: Routledge 1994.

New understanding of women battering in marriage

Margareta Hydén, Woman Battering as Marital Act: The Construction of a Violent Marriage. 172 pp. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994.

Learning and life

Maaret Wager, Constructions of Femininity in Academic Women: Continuity Between Private and Professional Identity. 287 pp. Helsinki: Suomalainen Teidekatemia, 1994.

Gunilla Bjerén and Inga Elgquist‐Saltzmann, eds, Gender and Education in a Life Perspective: Lessons from Scandinavia. 170 pp. Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1994.     

How is Anxiety Involved in the Longitudinal Relationship between Brooding Rumination and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents?

A growing body of research supports the application of Response Styles Theory to adolescent populations. Although the essential dynamic, namely that rumination increases the incidence of depressive symptoms, has been demonstrated among adolescents, a number of important empirical questions remain, such as: what are the gender differences and developmental trends for brooding and reflective rumination?; does a reciprocal relationship exist between brooding or reflective rumination, on the one hand, and depressive symptoms and anxiety, on the other hand, over time? and how do additional variables (i.e., anxiety) impact upon the rumination-depressive symptoms relationship? In this study, self-reported levels of rumination (both brooding and reflective), and anxious and depressive symptoms were measured longitudinally across 4 months in a sample of 976 community adolescents (46 % females), aged 11–16 years old. Mean group differences showed that female adolescents reported engaging in more brooding rumination than male adolescents beginning at 13 years of age. A reciprocal brooding rumination to depressive symptoms relationship and a reciprocal brooding rumination to anxiety relationship were found over time, and they did not differ for boys and girls. We tested the possibility that anxious symptoms would function as a third variable, but the obtained model showed that brooding rumination and anxiety both contributed unique variance in predicting changes in depressive symptoms over time.     

Trajectories of Identity Formation Modes and Their Personality Context in Adolescence

Identity formation is a dynamic process during adolescence. Trajectories of identity formation were assessed longitudinally in early and middle adolescents, taking into account the personality underpinnings of this process. Identity formation was conceptualized according to the circumplex of identity formation modes. The model distinguishes basic modes rooted in Marcia’s categories of exploration and commitment. Plasticity and stability, the two higher order Big Five meta-traits, were used to assess personality underpinnings. This study includes five measurement waves over 1.5 years and involves 1,839 Polish participants; 914 early adolescents (53.9% girls) and 925 middle adolescents (63.8% girls). The results suggest that (1) the four identity formation modes change dynamically, showing linear and curvilinear growth and that (2) identity formation mode trajectories are more dynamic in middle adolescence than in early adolescence. The results also showed that, in the conditional model, (3) the higher-order personality factors and gender affect the growth factors of identity formation modes. Overall, trajectories of identity formation modes are more linear during early adolescence and more curvilinear during middle adolescence. The initial levels in identity trajectories are influenced by the personality metatraits but only plasticity is related to change among early adolescents.