Reliability and Validity Study of a Culturally Adapted Turkish Version of the Assessment of Identity Development in Adolescence (AIDA.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to adapt the Assessment of Identity Development in Adolescence (AIDA), which is used to distinguish healthy identity development from identity diffusion in terms of impaired personality functioning, into Turkish and to examine its psychometric properties. METHOD: The sample consisted of 846 participants. The school sample consists of 778 adolescents from schools covering three different socioeconomic levels. The clinical sample consisted of 68 adolescents who were evaluated at Hacettepe University Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health and the Division of Adolescent Medicine. All participants completed the Offer Self-İmage Scales (OSIQ) and the AIDA Turkish. DSM-IV-based clinical interview, Scale For Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia For Kids-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL), and DSM-III-R Structured Clinical Interview For Axis II Disorders (SCID-II) were applied to the clinical sample. RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis showed that the phenotypical factor structure of the AIDA Turkish was similar to the original. The Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient is 0.93 on the total scale, 0.83 and 0.90 on the two primary subscales, and between 0.65 and 0.80 on the subscale level. AIDA Turkish total score identity diffusion was found to significantly distinguish the clinical sample with diagnosed personality disorders from the school sample, with a large effect size (d = 0.9) between the school sample and a clinical sample with diagnosed personality disorders. Receiver operating characteristic analysis yielded a clinical cut-off score of 107 (95% CI: 0.66–0.86, p <0.001) providing 81% sensitivity and 84% specificity. CONCLUSION: AIDA Turkish is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate identity development and detect pathological identity diffusion.