Self Development of Venezuelan Adolescents

Abstract

This study explores Kegan's theory of self development in a sample of 72 Venezuelan adolescents (aged 12 to 18). This study tests (a) whether Kegan's stages are found in a sample of Venezuelan adolescents and if they are equivalent to those found in U.S. adolescents of the same ages, (b) whether Kegan's Subject-Object Interview can be successfully used in a culture other than the United States, (c) whether age, gender, and their interaction have an effect on the stages of self development of this Venezuelan sample, and whether that effect is equivalent to that found in the U.S. subjects. Results show that, as predicted (given the information about U.S. samples), Stages 2, 3, and 4 are found among Venezuelan adolescents; that the instrument can be successfully used to assess these stages; that age has a significant effect, but gender has no effect.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

American Psychological Association. (1966). Standards for educational and psychological tests and manuals. Washington, DC: Author.

Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power: Analyses for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.

Colby, A. , Kohlberg, L. , Speicher, B. , Hewer, A. , Candee, D. , Gibbs, J. , & Power, C. (1987). The measurement of moral judgment: Standard issue scoring manual. (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kegan, R. (1979). The evolving self: A process conception for ego psychology. Counseling Psychologist, 8(2), 5-34.

Kegan, R. (1982). The self in transformation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lahey, L., Souvaine, E., Kegan, R., Goodman, R., & Felix, S. (1988). A guide to the subject-object interview: Its administration and assessment. Unpublished manuscript.

Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Noam, G. , Kohlberg, L. , & Snarey, J. (1983). Steps toward a model of the self. In B. Lee & G. Noam (Eds.), Developmental approaches to the self. New York: Plenum.

Snarey, J. , Kohlberg, L. , & Noam, G. (1983). Ego development in perspective: Structural stage, functional phase, and cultural age-period models. Developmental Review, 3, 303-338.

10.

Willett, J. B. , & Singer, J. D. (1988). Another cautionary note about R2: Its use in weighted least squares regression analysis. American Statistician, 42, 236-238.