College Student Identity Development

The purpose of the researcher was to investigate college student identity development. The sample consisted of 109 undergraduate college students. The independent variables investigated were race/ethnicity, gender, undergraduate college classification, and undergraduate college student commuter status. The dependent variables were scores from the three tasks of the Student Development Task and Lifestyle Assessment (Establishing and Clarifying Purpose Task, Developing Autonomy Task, and Mature and Interpersonal Relationships Task). Four composite null hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance employing a three-way analysis of variance (general linear model). A total of 84 comparisons were made. Of the 84 comparisons, 36 were for main effects and 48 were for interactions. The results of the present study appeared to support the following generalizations: 1. undergraduate college females have more growth in establishing and clarifying purpose during college than undergraduate males, 2. undergraduate college females have more growth in developing autonomy during college than undergraduate college males, 3. undergraduate junior and senior students had more development than undergraduate college freshmen and sophomore students, 4. the variables race/ethnicity and commuter status should be interpreted concurrently