Enhancing Female Adolescent Identity Development Through Ideological Perspective-Taking Training: A Replication and Extension Study

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of ideological perspective-taking training on female identity development. The primary hypothesis of the study was that those subjects engaged in the training sessions would show advancement in identity development that exceeded that of normal adolescent development. Ninety-eight subjects were pretested for the study. Attrition due to elimination during prescreening and failure to complete the training phase of the study left 50 subjects. Participants were assigned to a treatment group, an engaged control group, or a maturational control group. Both the treatment and engaged control groups participated in two sessions a week for a 4-week period. Posttesting was completed during the final week of the study. One-way analysis of variance and a repeated measures analysis of variance were computed on the pretest and posttest scores. There were no significant advances in ideological identity for those participating in the training program. Validity and reliability of the dependent measures are assessed and discussed. Implications for future research are presented