I'm wanting to investigate a person's adjustment to a diagnosis of MS by measuring their willingness to adapt to/accept their new identity. Does anyone have any experience or ideas about this?
If you look in the literature on chronic illness acceptance, there is a wealth of information on this topic. Although in this literature, this process is not generally viewed as "taking on a new identity" so I do not know if this is the topic in which you are interested.
The Acceptance of Illness Scale is probably one of the most commonly used measures.