I Am Whatever I Say I Am: The Salient Identity Content of U.S. Adolescents

Research about identity development has focused primarily on researcher‐chosen domains or overlooked content entirely. To investigate the content that is salient to adolescents, we analyzed responses to a shortened Twenty Statements Test (ten answers to the question, “Who am I?”) from 415 adolescents in the northeastern United States ( M age = 13.59 years; 63.7% girls, about 50% identified as White/European American). Inductive content analysis identified four Content codes (what the participants wrote: Personal, Social categories, Relationships, Self‐evaluation) and two Structure codes (how they wrote their statements: Qualifiers and Verb Tense). Content codes appeared in eight patterns, and there were between‐group differences in content and patterns. Results expand our understanding of adolescents’ identity content and demonstrate its complexity.