I Am Whatever I Say I Am: The Salient Identity Content of US Adolescents

Research about identity development has focused primarily on researcher-chosen domains or overlooked content entirely. To investigate the content that is salient to adolescents, we analyzed responses to a shortened Twenty Statements Test (ten answers to the question, "Who am I?") from 415 adolescents in the northeastern United States (M-age = 13.59 years; 63.7% girls, about 50% identified as White/European American). Inductive content analysis identified four Content codes (what the participants wrote: Personal, Social categories, Relationships, Self-evaluation) and two Structure codes (how they wrote their statements: Qualifiers and Verb Tense). Content codes appeared in eight patterns, and there were between-group differences in content and patterns. Results expand our understanding of adolescents' identity content and demonstrate its complexity.