On The Relation Between The Ego-identity Statuses And Meaning-making Of University Students

The development of ego identity is significant to personality development of university students. Researches on ego identity have divided into two approaches: the status approach and the narrative approach. The status approach divide the identity into four statuses, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement, by two dimensions, exploration and commitment, applying the questionnaire to testify the participant’s status. It emphasizes the temporal result of identity developmental. The newly developed narrative approach applies the interview to discuss the reflection of the relation between the events and the participant himself, which is called meaning-making, usually analyzed by the sophistication of meaning-making and the event type etc.. It emphasizes the process of identity development. Being clearly different, there is one emphasis in common of the two approaches, which is they both emphasize one’s initiative exploration and reflection in the identity development. More and more researchers think the cross point of the two approaches is closer to the identity developmental mechanism and they should and can be integrated. Mclean has proposed: 1, narrative is the means by which identity exploration can be carried out, and 2, narrative processing reflects commitments and can promote greater consistency between those commitments and behaviors. While researches of status approach are popular, ones on meaning-making and the integration of both approaches are rarely seen in domestic area. This study therefore applies both quantitative and qualitative methods to research the relation between identity status and meaning-making in attempt to enlarge the research on meaning-making and verify the hypotheses proposed by Mc Lean thus contributing to the integration of status approach and narrative approach.Study 1 was tested among 446 participants with the brief Chinese modified version of the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status II and the narrative questionnaire of meaning-making of turning-point event for university students. Study 2 was interviews on meaning-making of 4 participants, each one from one identity status. The major conclusions are:1. Among the four identity statuses of university students, moratorium is of the most while achievement is of the least. The score of achievement status of boys’ is significantly higher than girls’.2. The sophistication of meaning-making of university students are beyond the level of “lesson”. There are significant differences among grades in sophistication of meaning-making, freshmen are significantly lower than sophomore and juniors. There’s no significant difference between genders. There are significant differences for event types. The most reported event types are nonacademic achievement, romantic relationship and dialogue and reflection. There are significant differences among grades for event types. Freshmen and sophomores care most about nonacademic achievement, juniors care most about nonacademic achievement and romantic relationship, and seniors care most about internship and jobs. There is significant difference between genders. Boys care more about romantic relations while girls care more about nonacademic achievement.3. The score of diffusion and foreclosure status are negatively associated with the sophistication of meaning-making, so are the score of low-exploration and low-commitment statuses. The score of achievement status and the overall identity development index are positively associated with the sophistication of meaning-making. The sophistication of meaning-making of high-exploration and high-commitment statuses is significantly higher than that of low-exploration and low-commitment.4. The meaning-making of event influence or personal gain is the means of identity exploration. Sophisticated and profound meaning helps identity exploration, whereas far more sophisticated meaning which is disjointed with daily life doesn’t help the form of commitment. The meaning-making of self-understanding shows identity commitment. The commitment could be used to guide and help one understand his feelings and behaviors as long as it’s founded. Adapting change of one’s self-understanding helps identity development. Thus narrative is the means by which identity exploration can be carried out, and, narrative processing reflects commitments and can promote greater consistency between those commitments and behaviors.