The formation of an identity during adolescence is believed to be facilitated by conformity to others and membership in a peer group. Because gifted adolescents in a typical school setting often experience difficulties in conformity and peer group membership, they can be expected to face some unique challenges during adolescence. The current study seeks empirical evidence for discrete strategies that gifted adolescents may use to cope with perceived social difficulties. Highly gifted students who were identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth and who participated in a rigorous summer academic program completed a survey that was specifically designed to reflect coping strategies proposed in the literature. The results of the survey were factor analyzed and yielded five meaningful factors: denial of giftedness, popularity/conformity, peer acceptance, fear of failure, and activity level. The results of the factor analysis suggest that further research focusing on the measurement of social coping strategies among gifted adolescents is warranted.

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Research into the psychosocial experiences o f g i f d adohscents indi-cates that they believe others see tbem as %z@rent, I ) and this perception may interfere with social interaction. Some authors have described the experience of being identij2d as gifed in school as socially stigmatizing. The few studies that have investigated how gifcd adoksccnts cope with this stigma sugest that they use a variety of methoa!c to control the information others have about them.The Social Coping Questionnaire (SCQI was designcd to measure such strategies. The mrrent study presents an expansion of the SCQ andsupports prrvious findings indicating that the social coping strategies used by giflrd adolescents are identifiable and measurabk Factor anaIysis of the rmiscd SCQproduredfve social coping factors: denial of gifedness, emphasis on popukzrig peer acceptance, social interaction, and hiding g$edness, Gender d$ fcrences suggest that fcmales are more like^ than males to deny their abilities and report high hurls of interpersonal activity. rikson (1950) stated that adolescence is characterized as a time of primary concern with one's social role and

Gifted students identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth who underwent academic acceleration in their education were longitudinally compared across several domains with a group of equally gifted students who were never accelerated. The groups were matched for gender and for ability and were studied for 10 years. At age 23 few significant differences were found between the groups for the individual academic and psychosocial variables studied. Both the accelerates and the nonaccelerates reported impressive academic achievements, as well as high personal satisfaction with school and self. When academic variables are considered as a group, the performance of accelerates is slightly higher than that of nonaccelerates. In both accelerated and unaccelerated groups, male students pursued mathematics/science more vigorously than did female students, but there was no differential response to acceleration on the basis of gender. The findings do not support the common concern that gifted students may be harmed by accelerative experiences.