A Study Of The Development Of Adolescent Identity Style And Its Relationship With Health

Identity style is an important factor affecting the adolescents'ego identity. It is, however, less researched at present in our country and current studies are only confined to the influence of identity style upon family relations, parent-child communication, coping style, etc. Although some researches from abroad explore the relationship between the identity style and psychological health, yet the conclusions are inconsistent. Therefore, employing the cross-sectional design, this study aims to investigate the fundamental characteristics of the development of adolescents'identity style and the development of individual's health and explore the interrelationship of identity style and the individual's health of adolescents.Employing the SRHMS and the modified measures of identity style inventory questionnaire, the present study aims to investigate about 495 adolescents from junior high school, senior high school and university. The main findings are follows:1. So far as the adolescents are concerned, the proportion of adolescents using identity style from high to low is diffuse style, informational style and normative style.2. With regard to the developmental trends of identity style, the proportion of information-orientation individuals has no significant change among junior middle school, senior middle school and university. No significant difference is found in the percentage of normative-orientation in the junior high school, senior high school and university. The proportion of diffuse-orientation individuals in junior high school and university is more than that of senior high school.3. Overall, by contrast with female adolescents, there are more male adolescents in diffuse style. As to the style of informational, normative and diffuse, there is no significant difference in the proportion of males and females among junior high school, senior high school and university.4. With respect to the developmental trends of individuals'health, adolescents from junior high school have significant higher scores of physiological health, psychological health and overall health than those from senior high school and university. There is no significant difference of social health among different age stages.5. In general, male's physiological health is significantly better than that of female's. In gender difference aspect, the psychological health test of junior high school male students scored extremely higher than that of university male students and the overall health scores are higher than that of university male students as well. The physiological health test of the females in junior high school scored remarkably higher than that of females in senior high school, the psychological health scores are also higher than that of females in senior high school and university and the overall health scores is significantly higher than that of the females in senior high school and the university.6. From the perspectives of physiological health, psychological health and the overall health, people employing the informational style scored higher than those of normative style and diffuse style.7. Informational style is positively correlated with various dim mentions of individuals'health and the physiological, psychological, social and overall health. Normative style is directly proportional to the individuals'functions of daily lives, positive emotions, cognitive functions and role activities. Besides, it is also positively correlated with the social adjustment, social resources, social contacts, social support and overall health, social health. Diffuse style and social support dimension have positively significant relation.8. Daily living functions have a positive influence on the normative style; and cognitive function exerts a significant positive influence on the informational style while has negative effect on the diffuse style. Psychological symptoms and negative emotions exert a significant negative effect on the informational style. Role activities and social adjustment, social resources and social contacts all combine to have positive influence on the informational style; social support could positively affect normative style and diffuse style.