Personality characteristics of highly generative adults as assessed in Q-sort ratings of life stories

When Bad Things Turn Good and Good Things Turn Bad: Sequences of Redemption and Contamination in Life Narrative and their Relation to Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults and in Students

“…The scale shows high internal consistency (Cronbach's alphas of .82 and .83) and adequate test-retest reliability (.73 over a 3-week span) (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992). LGS scores have been shown to be positively correlated with measures of generative acts, strivings for generativity in daily life, and themes of generativity in autobiographical recollections (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992;McAdams et al, 1993), as well as with Q-sort ratings depicting a highly generative person as determined in interviews (Himsel, Hart, Diamond, & McAdams, 1997), with behaviors indicative of constructive parenting and prosocial community involvement, and with self-report measures of psycho-logical well-being (Cole & Stewart, 1996;Keyes & Ryff, 1998;McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998).…”

Longitudinal analysis of midlife generativity, intergenerational roles, and caregiving.

“…In addition to examining the rank-order stability of CAQ generativity, studies have also considered issues of convergent and divergent validity. For example, in a study of convergent validity, Himsel, Hart, Diamond, and McAdams (1997) used three criteria to create a highly generative group and a less generative group. Those placed in the highly generative group scored high on an inventory measure of generativity, checked that they engaged in a lot of generative behaviors, and worked closely with younger people.…”

“…Of the 13 items that composed Peterson and Klohnen's (1995) Q-sort generativity scale, 11 of the items were significantly more likely to be expressed in descriptions of people in the highly generative group. In addition to Himsel et al (1997), see Peterson (1998) for a second study that examined convergent and discriminant validity for the CAQ measure.…”