THE STABILITY OF SELF-CONCEPT IN LATE ADOLESCENCE - GENDER AND SITUATIONAL EFFECTS

The present study examined the stability of various aspects of the self concept as advocated by Harter [Carmichael's manual of child psychology (Vol. 4), 1983] over an 18 month period. This was done using three contrasting groups of adolescents, those who remained in a relatively stable environment-full-time education in the same school, those who also stayed on in full-time education but changed schools and those who moved from full-time education to full-time work. The study also examined the possibility of changes in the centrality of these various aspects of self in relation to overall self-esteem due both to the passage of time and changing environment. The participants were drawn from a pool of 2490 young people (53% girls) who were interviewed in late 1985 when the average age was 17 yr and who had completed the same questionnaires some 18 months earlier. The results indicated that overall there was evidence of relative stability especially amongst those whose environment had remained stable while the trend was for modest positive increases in almost all aspects of self-esteem over the time period examined. Gender differences (favouring males) were also common. However, there were no interactions between either gender and time or between post-school situation and time. Finally, the results, while only examining five aspects of the self, indicate the complexity of this whole area and in particular that different aspects of self appear to be relatively independent of each other and of overall self-esteem and that all may be open to various influences including those of gender, time and situation. © 1990.