The Profile Analysis of University Students Based on Identity Dimensions Academic research paper on "Economics and business"

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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1048 - 1050

WCPCG-2011

The Profile Analysis of University Students Based on Identity

Dimensions

Abbas Rahiminezhad a*, Somayeh Aghamohamadi a , Zeynab Kazemi a ,

Hojjat A. Farahania

aUniversity of Tehran ,Tehran,Iran, bUniversity of Isfahan ,Isfahan,Iran

Abstract

Purpose: The present study was aimed to investigate any changes of identity exploration and commitment after three years passing in university context. Method: 80 freshmen and 65 senior students from University of Isfahan were chosen using stratified random sampling. Results: The results of the study indicated that the overall pattern of students' exploration and commitment had remained constant (P=0.32), But their commitment decreased in the last year (P=0.001). Also, results demonstrated a significant difference between the two dimensions except for group membership (F(2 , 144) = 1.2 , P= .334) . Conclusion: the junior students' commitment of both genders reduced in comparison to that of the freshmen meanwhile the exploration factor remained constant.

© 2011Published by ElsevierLtd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance.

Kewords: Identity, Profile Analysis, commitment, exploration, freshmen student, senior student;

1. Introduction

Personality development during adolescence in terms of Erikson's (1968) theory was articulated as "identity achievement verses identity diffusion". In spied of introducing the concept of ego identity, Erikson did not offer an operational definition for the measurement of various ego identity statuses. For conquering the lack of operational definition of ego identities, Marcia (1966) proposed two criteria for identifying ego identity statuses of adolescents, named exploration and commitment. Exploration is an active searching and questioning of adolescents about important choices (e.g., values, beliefs, and goals). Commitment refers to the obligation due to their choice and engagement in activities related to their decisions. Marcia (1980) derived four ego identity statuses as: identity achieved (a commitment made following exploration), foreclosure (a commitment adopted without much prior exploration), moratorium (ongoing exploration with little commitment), and diffused (lack of commitment coupled with little systematic exploration).Recently Luyckx et al. (2005)extended Marcia's criteria from 2 dimensions to 4 dimensions( exploration in breadth , exploration in depth , commitment making and identification with commitment) and developed DIDS-2 for assessing these dimensions Luyckx et al (2008) .On the other hand Crocetti , Rubini ,Luyckx and Meeus (2008) proposed 3 identity processes (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and

* Abbas Rahiminezhad. Tel.: ++982161117490; fax: ++982188281515. E-mail address: arahimi@ut.ac.ir.

1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology,

Counselling and Guidance.

doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.204

Abbas Rahiminezhad et al. / Procedia - Social ami Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1048 -1050

reconsideration of commitment) for assessing identity statuses .In a factor analysis Study of DIDS-2 on Iranian students by Farahani, Kazemi, Aghamohamadi & Rahiminezhad ( in press)2 factors( commitment and exploration) yielded. Cramer (1998) in a longitudinal study on student from freshman to senior showed that the moratorium statues (high exploration and not commitment) were not changed significantly. The present study was aimed to investigate any changes of identity exploration and commitment after three years passing in university context. It is supposed to studying in university facilitate identity formation, as a result, decreasing exploration was expected.

2. Method

2.1. Participants and procedure

The sample consisted of 80 freshmen and 65 senior students from humanities, general science and engineering faculties at a university in Isfahan. Participants were chosen using stratified random sampling.

2.2. Scale

The dimension of identity development scale (DIDS-2) was designed by Luyckx et.al(2008). This scale contains 25 items. No items had to be reverse-coded and all items were answered on a 5-point Likert type rating scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). Luyckx et al (2008) administered this questionnaire on a Dutch sample and knew that to have the five components of (commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in depth, exploration in breadth and ruminative exploration). They calculated the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for these five dimensions in the first sample as 0.86, 0.86, 0.81, 0.69, and 0.96 and in the second sample as 0.86, 0.83, 0.86, 0.80 and 0.85 respectively. The difference between the DIDS first and second forms is that another dimension called null commitment was added to it by the designers. But the psychological properties of it were not analyzed. Therefore, five new items were added to the previous form for this dimension to be analyzed and finally the total number of questions got 30. The Farsi version of DIDS-2 translated by Farahani, Kazemi, Aghamohamadi & Rahiminezhad (in press)was used in this study .The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale on Iranian sample was calculated(0.83 for commitment and 0.76 for exploration).

3. Findings

The current article aims to analysis the commitment and exploration dimensions in freshmen and senior university students. At the beginning, the statistical tests were carried out for analyzing the means of the two groups in these two dimensions. The first test which was the Test of levels was intended to explore the group means' equality in these two dimensions. The second was the flatness test used to explore the group means' equality of the two dimensions regardless of group membership. The final test was the parallelism test which analyzed the group means' pattern and indicated whether the two dimensions' mean were equal in the two groups or not.

Table 1- shows the mean and standard deviation of commitment and exploration variables in the first and last year

Group First year Last year Combined

Variable (n=80) (n=65) (N=145)

Exploration M SD M SD M SD

39.1 5.8 35.5 6.02 38.8 5.9

Commitment 50.04 6.47 48.08 7.6 46.2 7.04

Table 2- shows the inter-correlations of commitment and exploration variables in the first and last year

_Group_

First year_Last year

**p < .05

Multiple variance analysis (MANOVA) was used for the parallelism test the result of which was not statistically significant (F (2, 144) = 1.2, P= .334). This means that the overall pattern of both groups were equal. The Independent t-test was used to obtain the mean differences (the levels' test).

Abbas Rahiminezhad et al. /Procedia - SocialandBehavioral Sciences 40(2011) 1048 - 1050

Variable t df P

Exploration 4.75 143 .001

Commitment 1.81 143 .32

The levels' analysis indicated that the first and last groups were different in the mean of commitment. This is not true about exploration. The flatness test was done to analyze the differences of the two dimensions regardless of group membership. A significant difference was found between these two dimensions. (F = 7.35, P= .001)

60 50 40 30 20 10 0

First year Last year

Exploration Commitment

Figurel: Means of first and last year on the exploration and commitment

4. Conclusions

The results of this study illustrated that the overall pattern of students' exploration and commitment had remained constant. But their exploration decreased in the last year. This finding may be due to decreasing moratorium and increasing identity achievement of students during their studying in the university. It is conclude that studying in university help students to find out their important questions of their lives. Constancy of commitment during studying in university implied the at student ego identity have formed. According to Erikson (1968) adolescence is the period in which ego identity is formed, the finding of this study support the Erikson theory overlay although some decrease of exploration occurred during university studying. Shortage of sample and cross-sectional design are of Limitation of this study.

References

Carmer, P. (1998). Freshman to senior year: A follow up study of identity, narcissism, and defense mechanisms. Journal of research in personality 32, 156-172.

Crocetti, E., Rubini, M., Luyckx, K .,& Meeus, W. (2008) Identity Formation in Early and Middle Adolescents From Various Ethnic Groups: From Three Dimensions to Five Statuses. Journal of Youth Adolescence, 37:983- 996.

Erikson, E. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton.

Farahani, H. A., Kazemi, Z., Aghamohamadi, S. & Rahiminezhad, A. (in press) . The psychometric properties of the Dimensions of Identity Development Scale (DIDS-2). Journal of Psychology and Education.

Luyckx, K., Goossens, L. , Soenens, B., Beyer, W.,& Vansteenkiste,M. (2005).Identity statuses based on 4 rather than 2 dimensions:Extending and refining marcia's paradigm.Journal of youth and adolescenc, Vol 34,No 6,605-618.

Luyckx, K., Schwartz , S. J., Berzonsky, M. D., Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Smits, I. & Goossens, L. (2008). Capturing ruminative exploration: Extending the four- dimensional model of identity formation in late adolescence. Journal of Research in Personality ,42 ,58-82.

Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 551-558.

Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In Adelson, J. (ed.), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. Wiley, New York, pp. 159-187.