This study investigated the capacity of Loevinger's Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development (SCT) to predict problem ward behavior and length of hospitalization (LOS) in adolescentjind young adult (13-28 years old) psychiatric inpatients. It was hypothesized that the SCT assessed'complex aspects of personality development related to judgment, impulse control, and social competence, which in turn would be reflected in ward behavior and LOS. Problem ward behavior included a variety of incidents including assaults, accidents, and suicide attempts. The SCT predicted a small but significant increment in variance in problem ward behaviors after evaluation of IQ and age in the hierarchical multiple regression and predicted a much larger final increment (21%) of LOS. The present findings support the validity of the SCT for clinical research and provide a developmental perspective on ward behavior and LOS.

The relationship between Loevinger's measure of ego development and authoritarian attitudes was explored in a sample of 966 late adolescents and young adults. Based on stage descriptions, it was hypothesized that authoritarianism would have a curvilinear relationship with ego development and that higher stage subjects would be low in authoritarianism. A specific question was whether authoritarianism would be more prominent at the self-protective (lower) or the conformist (middle) stage of ego development. The findings indicate that conscientious (higher stage) subjects are consistently less authoritarian than conformist subjects on a variety of specific attitudes. The study further indicated that both the self-protective subjects and the conformists demonstrated authoritarian attitudes but that these two groups differed in the extent of their authoritarianism depending on the specific topic area assessed. The results suggest that although many of the attitudes of the conscientious stage of ego development are fairly well defined, further research needs to be conducted in order to more finely differentiate characteristic attitudes of the self-protective from the conformist stage of ego development.1 This descriptive category label was coined by Robert R. Holt and is used here because of the lack of one provided by Loevinger.

The relationship between Loevinger's measure of ego development and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales subtest scores was investigated in 91 adolescent and young adult psychiatric inpatients. Correlations with Verbal IQ and verbal subtests in general were positive and significant. The correlation with the Comprehension subtest was the highest and remained significant when Full Scale IQ was partialled. Post-conformists obtained the highest mean scores on Picture Arrangement; however, there was no difference among the lower stages on this subtest. The results lend support to a social reasoning component of ego development.

This study presents two sets of analyses designed to evaluate the relation between a 12-item form of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of ego development (Short Form; SCT-S) and socioeconomic status (SES). The subjects were a large national random sample of adolescent and young adult men and women who were stratified into three artificial age cohorts. The first set of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that SES accounted for 8% to 13% of the variance in SCT-S scores. Incremental validity of the SCT-S in predicting social attitudes, beyond that predicted by SES, was generally supported for authoritarian aggression and partially supported in predicting masculine sex role expectations. Findings suggest that research on ego development with subjects over age 18 might use level of education as a rough index of SES. For younger subjects, parental factors and education are both important. This study also provides revised age-specific national norms for the SCT-S.

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