A Comparison of Cognitive Autonomy in Adolescents From a Residential Treatment Center and A Traditional Public High School

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which factors influencing cognitive autonomy differed for identified and not identified troubled adolescents. One hundred and nineteen residential treatment youth aged 14 to 18 and 13 7 public high school adolescents were compared using the Cognitive Autonomy Self Evaluation (CASE) inventory, which examines five elements of cognitive autonomy including evaluative thinking, voicing opinions, decision making, self-assessing, and comparative validation. Findings reveal that generally cognitive autonomy did not differ according to troubled status. However, ninth-grade females at the traditional public high school rated themselves much higher in evaluative thinking, voicing opinions, decision-making, and self-assessing than the ninth-grade females at the residential treatment center. Implications for these findings and further recommendations were also discussed