A 20-YEAR STABILITY ANALYSIS OF THE STUDY OF VALUES FOR INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED INDIVIDUALS FROM ADOLESCENCE TO ADULTHOOD

A sample of 203 intellectually gifted adolescents ( top 1 %) were admi nistered the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey (1970) Study of Values (SOV) at ag e 13; 20 years later, they were administered the SOV again. In this st udy, researchers evaluated the intra- and interindividual temporal sta bility of the 6 SOV themes, namely, Theoretical (T), Economic (E), Pol itical (P), Aesthetic (A), Social (S), and Religious (R). Over the 20- year test-retest interval, the SOV's mean and median interindividual c orrelations for the 6 themes were .37 and .34, respectively. Correspon dingly, the mean and median of all 203 intraindividual correlations we re .30 and .39. Configural analyses of the most dominant theme at age 13 revealed that this theme was significantly more likely than chance to be dominant or adjacent to the dominant theme at age 33. Adjacency was ascertained through a number of empirically based auxiliary analys es of the SOV, revealing 2 robust gender-differentiating clusters: T-E -P for males and A-S-R for females.