The Study of Lives Research Group

• The Life Story Interview (1995)
• The Life Story Interview II (2007)
• Interview for Faith, Politics, and the Life Story project (2005)
• Guided Autobiography (1997)
• Coding Narrative Accounts for Redemption Sequences (1999)
• Coding Narrative Accounts for Contamination Sequences (1998)
• Coding Narrative Accounts for Themes of Agency and Communion (2002)
• Revised Coding System for Agency and Communion (developed by Jon Adler)
• Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS)
• Northwestern Ego Integrity Scale (NEIS)

Researchers are free to use any and all of these instruments – no explicit permission is needed. When it comes to the different interview protocols, the Life Story Interview II is the best overall generic protocol for doing life story research. However, researchers should feel free to adapt that instrument, or any of the other interview protocols, to the specific needs of their own projects. The interviews are set up to collect a large amount of data on many different topics. However, most research projects aim to focus on a few topics in some depth, so it makes sense to modify the interview to meet your own specific research needs.

With respect to the coding schemes, each has been used successfully in numerous studies, so making major changes in them is not generally recommended, in the interest of building a cumulative science of life stories. (Not included in this website at present are well-validated coding schemes for assessing narrative coherence and meaning making, among other constructs.) In many life-narrative studies, there may be no existing system that fully captures the specific idea that the researcher wants to code. In these cases, researchers may need to develop their own coding systems.

Let us offer an important note regarding the two systems used to measure the concepts of “agency” and “communion.” The 2002 version, used in many studies, derives in large part from earlier TAT coding systems that measured power/achievement motivation (agency) and intimacy/affiliation motivation (communion). Like those systems, the 2002 version assesses the relative amount of thematic material related to agency (or communion) in a story. A low score means that there is very little mention of agentic (or communal) themes in a story; a high score means that agency (or communion) is prominently featured. By contrast, the revised and simplified system, developed by Jon Adler, assesses the relative quality of agency or communion in a given story. For agency, then, the story is rated on a continuum that runs from the protagonist’s feelings of powerlessness (lack of efficacy, lack of control – a low score) to his/her feelings of mastery (high efficacy, high control – a high score). Similarly, communion runs from feelings of loneliness to feelings of warmth and intimacy on the part of the protagonist. This difference in coding – between the original and revised systems – makes a big difference in research findings, especially with regard to agency. In a nutshell, while early studies that employed the original (2002) system showed that agency scores tended to be unrelated to psychological well-being, studies using Adler’s newer system show that high scores on agency tend to be positively associated with well-being. It is our view that Adler’s system is closer in spirit to a self-determination idea of agency – as meeting the intrinsic needs for autonomy and/or mastery.

Finally, the 20-item Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS) has been used in scores of studies as a state-of-the-art self-report measure of generativity, capturing how strong and salient an adult’s concern for (and perceived success in) promoting the well-being of future generations is. The Northwestern Ego Integrity Scale (NEIS) is a newer measure that has not received a great deal of research attention to date. The NEIS is designed to assess individual differences in the psychosocial issue that is at the heart of Erik Erikson’s last (eighth) stage of psychosocial development – ego integrity versus despair.