Characteristics of Young Adults' Personal Religious Narratives and Their Relation with the Identity Status Model: A Longitudinal, Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated precursors to the formation of the life story in the particular context of the religious self in young adulthood using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Religious or spiritual peak experience narratives told by 100 Canadian young adults at age 26 were examined in relation to earlier religious beliefs and identity statuses at ages 17, 19, and 23. Coherent relationships over time between identity status development and religious narratives supported a link between the development of a personal ego identity and characteristics of the life story, as expected. Overall, these findings suggest that the life story approach to identity development (McAdams, 2008) can be illuminating in the domain of religious experience and can enrich Eriksonian models of identity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant. Portions of this research were reported at the Society for Research in Adolescence Meetings in Philadelphia, PA, March 2010. The authors thank Wisam Al-Dabbagh, James Allen, Elise Bisson, and Shannon Hebblethwaite for help with data collection and coding, and the participants of this study for their willingness to share their stories.

Notes

^a Scores on the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (OM-EIS) reflect continuous scores on each of Marcia's four identity statuses, rather than discrete categories.

^a Correlations are one-tailed.

^b Fundamentalism was not measured at age 17.

*p < .10. **p < .05.

^a Correlations are one-tailed.

^b Correlations in parentheses are controlled for story length.

*p < .10. **p < .05.

^a Correlations are one-tailed.

^b Correlations in parentheses are controlled for story length.

*p < .10. **p < .05.

*p < .10. **p < .05.