High School Students' Identity Style And Its Relationship With Coping Strategies

In recent years, the focus of empirical research on ego identity has been turned to identity style. Identity style refers to reported preferences in the social-cognitive strategies used to engage or to avoid the tasks of constructing and maintaining a sense of identity, including the information style, the normative style, and the diffuse/avoidant style.This study aimed to generalize and extend research on identity styles among high-school students during their early and middle adolescence. Firstly,the Identity Style Inventory (ISI-4) was translated into Chinese and then revised according to the results of 2 pretests; Secondly, the revised Identity Style Inventory and a High School Students'Ways of Coping Inventory were administered to 921 students in Grade 7 to Grade 11 from 4 high schools. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed on the revised ISI-4 in the sample. The general characteristics of identity style possessed by early and middle adolescents in China were investigated; gender, age, grade and school type comparisons were made with respect to identity style; and the relationship between identity styles and strategies used by these high school-age adolescents to cope with stressors that potentially threaten their sense of identity was examined. The results are fully discussed in terms of a social-cognitive theory of identity development.The main conclusions of this study were as follows:(1) The revised identity style inventory was found to have good reliability and validity and can be used for future studies concerning identity style of early and middle adolescents in China;(2) In general, proportionately most high school-age adolescents were classified as information-oriented, whereas least high school students were classified as diffuse/avoidant- oriented;(3) Significant differences were found between school types on identity style: Students in key high schools had a significantly higher mean information score and lower mean diffuse/avoidant score than their counterparts in ordinary high schools; and very much alike, proportionately more key high school than ordinary high school students were classified as information-oriented, whereas more ordinary high school than key high school students were classified as diffuse/avoidant-oriented; no significant difference was found between genders and among age or grade groups on all three identity styles, nor was interaction among genders, grades and school types;(4) High school-age adolescents with information style utilized more problem-focused coping strategies; in contrast, diffuse/avoiders tended to use more emotion-focused coping strategies; normative students relied on problem-focused and also emotion-focused coping strategies.