ABSTRACT
Analyses were designed to uncover which background and contextual factors were associated with identity development, and whether identity development served as a protective factor for both psychological and behavioral outcomes. They were also designed to discover whether identity is more related to behavioral or psychological outcomes for junior high school students living in urban poverty, and whether global or content-specific components of identity were more influential in explaining adolescent adjustment. Many of the scales in the questionnaire have not been utilized with urban adolescents. A consistent pattern of lower scores was not present for any of the groups, indicating that a racial bias was not inherent in the group of scales. It was important to examine the psychometric properties of the newly created content-specific scales at a more in-depth level. Several other psychometric tests were conducted: internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity. These were examined for each of the fidelity and influence subscales.
