A 20-year stability analysis of the study of values for intellectually gifted individuals from adolescence to adulthood

A sample of 203 intellectually gifted adolescents ( top 1 %) were administered the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey (1970) Study of Values (SOV) at age 13; 20 years later, they were administered the SOV again. In this study, researchers evaluated the intra- and interindividual temporal stability of the 6 SOV themes, namely, Theoretical (T), Economic (E), Political (P), Aesthetic (A), Social (S), and Religious (R). Over the 20-year test-retest interval, the SOV's mean and median interindividual correlations for the 6 themes were .37 and .34, respectively. Correspondingly, the mean and median of all 203 intraindividual correlations were .30 and .39. Configural analyses of the most dominant theme at age 13 revealed that this theme was significantly more likely than chance to be dominant or adjacent to the dominant theme at age 33. Adjacency was ascertained through a number of empirically based auxiliary analyses of the SOV, revealing 2 robust gender-differentiating clusters: T-E-P for males and A-S-R for females.