Ego Function Assessment (36 items)
A 36-item self-report adaptation of Bellak's twelve ego functions, organized into four higher-order factors. Higher scores indicate stronger, more adaptive ego functioning. Built from public-domain IPIP items. Free.
Reality Contact
Reality testing, sense of reality, judgment.
Drive / Affect Regulation
Impulse control, affect regulation, frustration tolerance.
Object Relations & ARISE
Object relations, stimulus barrier, autonomous functions, synthetic–integrative function, and regressive ego function in service of the ego.
Autonomous Efficacy
Mastery, competence, and adaptive self-direction.
At a glance
About the measure
Bellak's ego function framework conceptualizes psychological health as the degree to which the ego can perform its adaptive functions — testing reality accurately, regulating drives and affect, maintaining stable object representations, tolerating frustration, and integrating experience into a coherent self-picture. The original Ego Function Assessment (EFA; Bellak, Hurvich, & Gediman, 1973) was a clinician-rated interview measure. This self-report adaptation uses 36 public-domain IPIP items to capture the same four higher-order constructs: Reality Contact, Drive/Affect Regulation, Object Relations & ARISE, and Autonomous Efficacy.
Higher scores on each factor indicate more adaptive ego functioning in that domain. This is an informational measure and does not constitute a clinical assessment.
Items drawn from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006; ipip.ori.org), organized by Bellak's ego-function framework (Bellak, Hurvich, & Gediman, 1973; Bellak & Goldsmith, 1984). Norms computed from the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS) — Lewis R. Goldberg's adult community panel from Eugene and Springfield, Oregon (Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/UF52WY). This is a community sample and is NOT nationally representative. The mean, standard deviation, reference N and Cronbach's α were computed directly from the raw IPIP item-level responses on THIS scale's exact item set and reverse-keying (complete cases); reference N varies by scale and is shown with each scale below. The confidence range uses the standard error of measurement (SEM = SD·√(1−α)) from that computed α.