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A total of 178 subjects participated in a study designed to assess whether adolescent perceptions of intrapsychic and extrapsychic functioning could be used to discriminate between pure identity statuses. Intrapsychic functioning was dimensionalized to include the degree of self-conscious reasoning, and the quality of the separation-individuation process of adolescence. Extrapsychic functioning was dimensionalized in terms of family coping, family cohesion, and openness of parent-adolescent communication patterns. The stepwise discriminant analysis yielded two discriminant functions which indicated that the adolescent's perceptions of intrapsychic and extrapsychic functioning significantly discriminated between the identity statuses. The classification results reveal that identity achieved and diffused adolescents were most accurately identified based on the discriminant functions. The discussion addresses the relevance of these findings to the model of adolescent psychosocial development advanced by Grotevant and Cooper.

A study was conducted to examine adolescent's sexual self-disclosure to their parents and friends. The sample consisted of 169 senior high school students. The results revealed that adolescents engage in more sexual disclosure with their friends than with their parents. In addition, significantly greater sexual disclosure was reported between adolescents and same-sex, rather than opposite-sex, parent and friend. The only exception to this finding was that no significant differences were reported in male and female sexual self-disclosure to a best female friend. Additional regression analyses revealed that adolescent sexual disclosure to parents was strongly associated with adolescent perceptions of the openess and adaptiveness of the family context. By contrast, sexual disclosure to friends was strongly related to the adolescent's emotional individuation from the family. The discussion focuses on sexual socialization during adolescence.