RESILIENCE AS A MODERATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTACHMENT STYLES AND IDENTITY CRISIS.
The study investigated resilience as a moderator of the relationship between attachment styles and identity crisis among adolescents, A total of two hundred and thirty (230) participants were used for this study, comprising of one hundred and three(103) male and one hundred and twenty-seven(127) female adolescent from Methodist College, Idaw River Girls Secondary School, King’s Kid Secondary School, His Grace High School and Sacred Heart Secondary Schools all in Enugu state. The participants were between the age range of 11-17 years, and a mean age of 14.07 years. The secondary school students were drawn making use of purposive sampling technique. Three sets of instruments were administered in this study; they include; Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (West et al.., 1998); Identity crisis scale (Ahmadi, 1997) and Resilience scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003). A Correlational design was adopted. Thus, moderated hierarchical multiple Regressions with the aid of S.P.S.S version (25), was applied as a statistical tool in order to test the hypotheses. Based on the outcomes of this study, all the control variables did not remarkably predict identity crisis among adolescents. However, attachment styles (goal-corrected partnership) positively predicted identity crisis among adolescents, also, resilience positively predicted identity crises among adolescents on individual capacity. Finally, resilience negatively moderated the relationship between attachment styles (goal-corrected partnership) and identity crises among adolescents. The researcher recommended that further research should also investigate other potential moderators and mediators, such as social support, Self-efficacy, and Self-esteem, in moderating the prediction of attachment styles and identity crisis.