Reevaluatingthe Evidence for Increasingly Positive Self-Views Among High School Students More Evidence for Consistency Across Generations (1976-2006)

摘要

Twenge and Campbell (2008) evaluated 13 items from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) data sets and concluded that the self-views of U.S. high school students have become generally more positive over time. For many items, they compared responses from 2006 with responses from 1975; however, there is a warning that appears at the bottom of every page of the mono_graph that contains the 1975 data (Johnston & Bachman, 1980): "CAUTION: Items were rearranged after 1975; changes in context may produce spurious `trends."' Johnston and Bachman (1980) warned readers that comparisons between 1975 and any other single year should be avoided, and they even cited the "good worker" item as one that might be subject to survey artifacts (p. 12). This concern with the 1975 data is the reason why responses have not been made available electronically (J.G. Bachman, personal communication, August 22, 2008).