Impact of identity process on psychological well-being of adolescents

The period of adolescence and youth is often described as the time for identity formation as well as a period where individuals seem to be at greater risk for problem behaviours associated with lower levels of adjustment and psychological well-being. These later aspects “the storm and stress” are no longer believed to be naturally occurring features of the developmental period, rather they are considered to be the outcome of the processes taking place during the course of development. As a result of the importance of the identity formation process on development, considerable attention has been devoted to exploring the factors that contribute to ego development. For the present study, it was hypothesised that adolescent boys and girls would significantly differ in their process of identity formation. Also, the process of identity formation will have a significant impact on psychological well-being of adolescents.  For this, a purposive sample of 600 adolescent participants (300 boys and 300 girls) was collected. The scales of EOM-EIS-II (Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status-2 by Bennion and Adams, 1986) and Friedman well-being scale (1994) were administered. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse the data. Pearson product moment method of correlation applied to understand significant relation among the variables of identity and psychological well-being suggests a significant relationship of identity status and well-being. The t-test applied to study the gender differences reveals significant differences for the identity statuses of achievement, moratorium, diffusion, foreclosure and psychological well-being among boys and girls.