Revised Description and Measurement of Ego Development in Early Adolescence:

Abstract

The applicability of the Loevinger conception of ego development was explored for the period of early adolescence. Recent modifications of the earliest ego levels are summarized, and a new version of the measure is presented: the Sentence Completion Test for Children and Youth (SCT-Y). Questions were considered about the reliability and validity of this new instrument. The main question addressed was whether an oral administration would yield essentially different responses and significantly differing ego-levelscores as compared to the standard written administration in an early adolescent sample (9.5 through 15.5 years of age; N = 120). The results indicated that an oral administration of the SCT-Y did not yield essentially different responses or significantly differing ego-level scores, regardless of the respondent's age, gender, reading/writing skills, and preference for either presentation mode. The findings indicate that the revision of the ego development construct and measure for (early) adolescence does not seem to be an artifact of the written procedure.

Intelligence and maturity: Meta-analytic evidence for the incremental and discriminant validity of Loevinger's measure of ego development.

“…Many studies have reported Cronbach's alpha values of .90 or higher. Similar reliability and internal consistency data were obtained for the SCT-Y (e.g., Westenberg, van Strien, & Drewes, 2001).…”

The Mediating Effect of Mother-Adolescent Interactions on the Relationship Between Maternal Ego Development and Adolescent Individuation in Taiwan

“…Borderline rules were used to arrive at a total protocol rating (TPR) for each participant, with TPR scores corresponding to ego development levels (E2 to E9). The average ego level for the adolescents was near the conformity level ( M = 3.88, SD = 1.02), similar to a Dutch study of the same age group (Westenberg et al, 2001). The mothers’ protocols were scored in the same manner.…”

“…Ego development consistently progresses with age during childhood and adolescence (Novy, 1993), but large variations in ego development have been found among age cohorts in individuals older than 14 (Redmore & Loevinger, 1979). The modal developmental stage for early adolescents in Dutch samples was between self-protective (E3) and conformist (E4) (Westenberg, van Strien, & Drewes, 2001). In Liu’s study (2009a, 2009b) of Taiwanese students, the average senior high school student had reached the conformist stage, and the average college student had reached the self-aware stage.…”

Ego Development and Ethnic Identity Formation in Rural American Indian Adolescents

“…These descriptive terms are applied to adults, children, and adolescents alike. However, recent efforts to collect extensive data on representative samples of children and adolescents by Westenberg and colleagues (Westenberg, Jonckheer, Treffers, & Drewes, 1998; Westenberg, Van Strien, & Drewes, 2001) suggest that the description of milestone characteristics for each stage in application to children and adolescents are likely to require revision. Although any person at the impulsive level of ego development may share similar conscious preoccupations, modes of handling impulses, and elements of interpersonal functioning, there are clearly different implications associated with this level of functioning in a 9‐year‐old child as compared with a 29‐year‐old adult.…”