Prefer a scored assessment to reading yourself into a stage

Do not pick the stage description that sounds most like you; if you want a level, use a scored instrument, and treat your own sense of your stage as a guess to test.

Warum es wirkt

Loevinger built her test on free-written sentence endings scored by raters working from a scoring manual, because a person’s frame of reference shows most clearly when they project it rather than choose from options. Her 1973 faking studies found that people could deliberately lower their scores, mostly down to the Self-protective stage (an early stage in her scheme), and that almost half of the men told to fake higher could raise theirs, usually by no more than half a step. Her 1979 review judged the test adequate for research but not for individual diagnosis unsupported by other data. Reading stage descriptions and choosing the one that fits skips the scoring step the test’s author treated as central. On this page’s reading, a self-chosen label can reflect the stage a person wants to be, the vocabulary of the descriptions, or the most flattering option, and nothing in the choice separates these.

So gehst du vor

1. Write down the stage you think you are at before you read any descriptions.
2. Read the descriptions only after you have written your guess, and note which one you were drawn to first.
3. Ask whether the stage you chose is the one you hope to be, the one you dislike, or the one that matches what you do.
4. If a level matters for a decision, look for a scored instrument, administered and rated against a manual by scorers, and treat your self-rating as one input to compare with it.

Evidenz

Loevinger (1979) reports internal consistency (how consistently the test’s items agree with one another) of about .85, and calls the construct validity (whether the test measures the concept it is built to measure) evidence “substantial, but falls short of clear proof of sequentiality” (that the stages come in a fixed order). She judges the test adequate for research when administered and scored with sufficient care, but not for individual diagnosis unsupported by other data. Loevinger (1973) describes the faking studies: people could deliberately lower their scores, mostly down to the Self-protective stage in one study; almost half of the men told to fake higher could raise theirs, usually by no more than half a step, and skilled raters could usually spot protocols faked low. The cited studies concern the test’s properties, not the self-reading exercise, which is a reflective application that has not been tested. (mechanistic)

Loevinger’s faking studies were run on research participants, not on people deciding their own stage. On this page’s reading, a scored test is itself an estimate. The practice does not make a test a verdict; it only keeps a self-description from standing in for one.

Quellen

• Loevinger, J. (1979). Construct Validity of the Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Applied Psychological Measurement, 3(3), 281–311.
• Loevinger, J. (1973). Recent Research on Ego Development. Paper presented in part to the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia. ERIC Document ED 078 066.

Häufiger Fehler

Choosing the description you admire and calling it a finding. The description was written to be recognized, and recognition is not the same as scoring.