Gifted Adolescents' Attitudes Toward Their Giftedness: A Partial Replication

Kerr, Colangelo, and Gaeth (1988) assessed gifted adolescents' perceptions of their own and others' views of and reactions to their giftedness in personal, academic, and social areas through an open-ended questionnaire. Their results showed that the gifted adolescents' "views of their giftedness were not unidimensional" (p. 245). The purpose of the present study was to further Kerr et al.'s (1988) investigation by tailoring the questions to individuals' experiences and expanding the scoring scheme within response type. Results show that views of the gifted label and its effects are multifaceted, varying in ways different from those previously noted. Gifted adolescents may be coming to realize that there are positive and negative aspects to almost all social roles, statuses, and labels.