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Commitment to social identities has been postulated as a central organizing feature of the self-system, yet the only widely used instrument for assessing identities is the Twenty Statements Test. Wylie has criticized the use of the test as a measure of self because of its failure to provide reliable and valid results. An alternative method of assessing commitments is describedd in the present article, and the validity of this new method is tested. Study 1 demonstrates that a 23-item index can be used to assess commitment to a number of diverse iden- tities. Commitment scores based on the index correspond to the placement of identities in a hierarchy of importance based on subjective rank orderings. In Study 2, a multitrait-multimethod matrix is created to establish the convergent and discriminant validity of the 23-item index for the identities of peer, religious participant, romantic partner, and family member. The correlations between commitment to each of these four identities and related attitude measures are also reported.
Susan E. Jackson (Thu,) studied this question.