Promoting Adolescents’ Personal and Social Identities: A Meta-Analysis of Psychosocial Interventions

This systematic review with meta-analysis sought to identify psychosocial interventions to enhance adolescents' and emerging adults' personal and social identities and assess their effectiveness. The review was pre-registered in PROSPERO. Eligible quasi-experimental studies and randomized control trials available as journal articles or gray literature (e.g. dissertations, reports) were searched using multiple strategies. By applying a two-step selection process, a final set of 34 references (reporting 36 independent studies involving 4,529 participants, of whom 2,368 were in the intervention group and 2,161 in the control group) was found to match the eligibility criteria. The meta-analytic findings highlighted the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions addressing personal (17 studies, Cohen's d = 0.48 [0.18, 0.77], p = .002), social (4 studies, d = 0.36 [0.08, 0.65], p = .012), and ethnic (17 studies, d = 0.23 [0.14, 0.32], p < .001) identities. Effect sizes were generally small-to-moderate. Moderating analyses were used to ascertain for whom and when interventions were more effective. Based on the meta-analytic results and the state-of-the-art appraisal, an agenda for future research was proposed.