Measuring Personality Development in the Aftermath of Critical Life Events: A Preliminary Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study

This article aims to conceptualize, operationalize, and empirically validate the concept of actual personality development in the aftermath of a Critical Life Event. Two qualitative tools have been elaborated: the Structured Critical Life Events Interview and the Coding System for Personality Development. They were empirically verified in a preliminary longitudinal mixed methods study (N = 40 participants, n = 1440 narratives) with three measurements in one year referring to the Transition Cycle (Hopson & Adams, 1976). For assessing reliability the Intraclass Correlation Co-efficient (ICC) and Cronbach’s α were assessed. The convergent validity of the tools was deter¬mined by correlating the results with (1) linguistic structure of participants’ verbalizations and (2) the questionnaires measuring similar behaviours and features. The research showed good psycho-metric properties of the tools. Moreover, they better identified personality growth and the specific dynamics of personality changes (positive and negative) than the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996).