Appreciating life’s complexities: Assessing narrative ego integrity in late midlife

Based on Erik Erikson’s written work, we developed a measure of ego integrity in which participants’ narratives can be coded and used in both qualitative and quantitative analyses. We suggest that this measure enables a nuanced assessment of ego integrity in which people express their thoughts about their lives in their own words. In two independent samples of women aged 62 (N = 58 and N = 70), this measure demonstrated convergent validity with Ryff and Heincke’s [Ryff, C. D., & Heincke, S. G. (1983). Subjective organization of personality in adulthood and aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(4), 807–816.] close-ended measure of ego integrity. Further, it was significantly related to regret resolution and overall well-being, providing evidence of construct validity. Finally, analyses of four participants’ profiles suggest that the narrative measure captures elements of ego integrity that the close-ended measure does not.