Jeylan T. Mortimer

Work Experience and Occupational Value Socialization: A Longitudinal Study.

This research examines the effects of work experience on occupational reward values, which are of central importance in occupational choice, career development, and subjective responses to work. Whereas it is often assumed that occupational values remain fixed throughout the work history, a confirmatory factor analysis of data obtained from male college graduates over a 10-year time span demostrates that work authonomy and income influence intrinsinc, people-oriented, and extrinsic values. Rewarding occupational experiences were found to reinforce the same values that constituted the basis of earlier work selection. The findings raise several issues for the study of social in equality.

Volunteerism during the Transition to Adulthood: A Life Course Perspective

This panel study examines whether educational, work, and family roles promote volunteerism during late adolescence and early adulthood, as they do later in adulthood. The findings reveal substantial continuity in volunteerism from adolescence through the transition to adulthood and highlight the importance of values expressed in adolescence for volunteerism in the years following. Controlling these processes, attending school during this life stage promotes volunteerism. In contrast, full-time work investments in the early life course are found to hinder volunteer participation, as does the presence of young children in the family, especially at earlier parental ages. The results support a life course perspective for understanding civic participation.

The Changing Adolescent Experience: Societal Trends and the Transition to Adulthood.

1. Macrostructural trends and the reshaping of adolescence Jeylan T. Mortimer and Reed Larson 2. Youth in aging societies Elizabeth Fussell 3. The transition from school to work Alan C. Kerckhoff 4. Criminal justice in the lives of American adolescents: choosing the future Frank T. Cullen and John P. Wright 5. Adolescent health care in the US: implications and projections for the new millennium Elizabeth M. Ozer, Tracy MacDonald and Charles E. Irwin, Jr. 6. Youth and information technology Ronald E. Anderson 7. Social space, the final frontier: adolescents on the Internet Kate Hellenga 8. Approaching policy for adolescent development in the twenty-first century James Youniss and Allison J. Ruth.

Adolescent Work, Vocational Development, and Education

This article examines the consequences of adolescents’ employment experiences for vocational development and educational pursuits within varying historical and social contexts. Attention is directed to the changing social and cultural context for adolescent paid work, the balance of school and work, the influence of work experience on adolescent vocational development and educational/career achievement, and theoretical approaches that guide contemporary vocational development and career maturity studies. In light of current theories, research directions are suggested to enhance understanding of the influences of adolescent employment and work experiences on future educational pursuits and vocational pathways. School-based strategies and programs to promote adolescents’ initiative, engagement, and vocational development also are considered.

Occupational Experience and the Self-Concept: A Longitudinal Study

This research examines the socializing effects of work experience on the competence dimension of the self-concept during the early work career. The panel consisted of 435 male 1966-67 college graduates who were studied during their undergraduate years andfollowed up, 10 years later, by a mail survey. Using the confirmatory factor analysis procedure, the findings demonstrated significant effects of work autonomy on the individuals sense of competence or personal efficacy. With work autonomy and other pertinent variables controlled, income, an indicator of extrinsic rewards and socioeconomic attainment, did not significantly enhance the self-concept over time. These findings support a generalization model of adult socialization, in which adaptations to occupational activities and demands are conceptualized as major sources of personal change. The results also showed that a sense of competence, prior to labor force entry, has significant implications for future income attainment and work autonomy.

TRACING THE TIMING OF “CAREER” ACQUISITION IN A CONTEMPORARY YOUTH COHORT

Contemporary youth typically experience considerable floundering and uncertainty in their transition from school to work. This article examines patterns of schooling and working during adolescence and the transition to adulthood that hasten or delay an important subjective marker of transition to adulthood: acquiring a job that is recognized as a “career.” We use Youth Development Study data, obtained from a prospective longitudinal study of 9th graders. Estimation of discrete-time logit models shows that adolescent work patterns during high school, as well as the cumulative investments they make in work and schooling in the years following, significantly influence this milestone. Time-varying predictors, including job characteristics and parenthood, also affect the process of movement into “careers.”

Adolescent Work Experience and Depressive Affect

Using longitudinal data from a panel of youth followed from the 9th to the 10th grade, we examine how facets of adolescents work influence depressive affects. The results support the hypothesis that work experiences contribute to depressed mood among adolescents. The findings also indicate that workers are more emotionally independent of their parents than non-working adolescents.

Social structure and the individual : emerging themes and new directions

By bringing together a set of papers in the broad social structure and personality tradition of social psychology, this issue of SPQ seeks to manifest its centrality to social psychology, and vice versa. The papers illustrate the utility and necessity of incorporating more careful and more explicit analyses of microsocial and psychological processes into the study of the relationships of macrosocial structures and processes to the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individual actors

Adolescent Work Experience and Family Relationships

According to Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986), each individual simultaneously participates in several “microsystems” that influence development, for example, the family, school, peer group, and workplace. Of central concern here is how the increasing prevalence of “youth work” may affect parent-adolescent relationships. The findings of a 3-year study of adolescents (n = 1,000) and their parents (925 mothers, 650 fathers) indicate that youth work has some significant effects on familial relationships. The findings also suggest gender differences in the linkage of youth work and family life.

Adolescence and Adult Work in the Twenty-First Century.

The transition from school to work is a story that meshes the life histories of youth and the economic and social development of societies. Drawing on reports from diverse regions of the world, this article describes the range of adolescent experiences as they encompass the completion of school and the commencement of adult work. As the 21st century begins, major threats to the preparation of youth for adult work include deficiencies in schools, hazards of the informal work sector, a lack of clear connections between school and work, and the misuse or underutilization of technology. Yet this transition is also a story of optimism, as the significance of youth for economic and social development is increasingly appreciated at the national and international levels. Accordingly, this article considers the broad policy implications of the survey and then details the lines of action that address challenges to the preparation of youth for adult work. Although many regions of the world share common challenges, the integration of youth into the 21st century world of work will depend on how each country formulates a unique response that is sensitive to its demographic profile, social institutions, cultural heritage, and economic conditions.