Sheila K. Marshall

Transition to Adulthood as a Parent-Youth Project: Governance Transfer, Career Promotion, and Relational Processes.

This study determined how youth (ages 17-21) and their parents jointly constructed and acted on goals and strategies pertinent to the transition to adulthood. Twenty parent-youth dyads were followed over an 8-month period using the qualitative action-project method. Data included their joint conversations, video recall of internal processes, self-monitoring logs, and researcher telephone monitoring. Detailed and repeated analysis of elements, functional steps, and goals resulted in the identification of an explicit joint project for each dyad that the participants saw as pertinent to the transition to adulthood. These projects referred broadly to the youth development of identity and social inclusion in the adult world and included the specific projects of career promotion, governance transfer, and parent-youth relational processes. The findings illustrate the complexity of the transition-to-adulthood process as well as its joint construction by parent and youth. Implications for practice include identifying and following the joint parent-youth transition project.

Perceived Mattering in Young Adults’ Romantic Relationships

The central goal of this study was to examine the construct of perceived mattering, the psychological tendency to perceive the self as significant to specific others, with regard to a romantic partner. In Study 1, data were collected from young adults involved in romantic relationships (N = 173) using open-ended survey response techniques. Findings from a qualitative analysis provided complex and rich information about young adults’ perceptions of mattering to their current romantic partners. Responses were used to develop a scale that was administered in Study 2 to a sample (N = 99) of young adults in romantic relationships. Analyses indicated that the scale is internally consistent and tests of association with measures of the quality of alternatives, relationship satisfaction, and investment size offer support for the validity of the measure.

Do Expectancies Influence Choice of Help-Giver? Adolescents’ Criteria for Selecting an Informal Helper

This study endeavors to test whether adolescents’ expectations of potential helpers’ nurturance and expertise are associated with adolescent selection of an informal helpgiver. A sample of 89 adolescents in Grades 8 and 11 responded to assessments of help seeking within four different scenarios. Regression analyses revealed that expectations of expertise are important in selecting a mother or father as a potential help giver, whereas expectations of nurturance are influential in choosing a friend as a help giver. Age was not found to modify the relationship between expectations and selection of a helper, and gender modified the relationship in only one scenario. Results are discussed in terms of adolescent help seeking as having a dual function, that of information seeking and relationship development.

An Examination of the Reciprocal Relationships Between Adolescents’ Aggressive Behaviors and Their Perceptions of Parental Nurturance

This study examined reciprocal relationships between adolescents’ perceptions of parental nurturance and two types of adolescent aggressive behaviors (indirect and direct aggression) using a transactional model. Three waves of longitudinal data were drawn from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The sample included 1,416 (735 female) adolescents who were 10- and 11-year-olds at Time 1 and became 14-and 15-year-olds at Time 3. The findings failed to support reciprocal effects, but confirmed parental effects at different ages for girls and boys. For girls, perceptions of parental nurturance at age 10 were negatively associated with both indirect and direct aggression at age 12. For boys, perceptions of parental nurturance at age 12 were negatively associated with both aggressive behaviors at age 14. Future research should continue to investigate reciprocal effects in parent-adolescent relationships to identify developmental periods where the effect of adolescents’ or their parents’ behavior may be stronger.

Healthcare transitions for adolescents with chronic life-threatening conditions using a Delphi method to identify research priorities for clinicians and academics in Canada

PURPOSE Research has only begun to examine the complexity of transition to adulthood under illness conditions. A Delphi method may be utilized to identify pertinent research priorities for academics and clinicians in adolescent healthcare transitions and prioritize a framework for an ongoing programme of research. METHODS Through a comprehensive recruitment strategy throughout Canada, 114 clinicians and academics were invited to participate in this national study. Three phases were conducted until consensus could be achieved for the five most pressing research priorities. RESULTS Thirty-eight respondents completed at least one of the three phases of the process. All responses were analysed, and five questions in phase 3 achieving a level of consensus ranging 64-80% were identified as the top five research priorities. These questions included: skills and knowledge adolescents require for the transition process, how to measure success, the factors that influence a successful transition and whether good transitions improve health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study can inform and prioritize a framework for an ongoing programme of research in Canada. The inclusion of clinicians and academics ensures that the research agenda incorporates perspectives from the front-line work of individuals providing care to this population as well as individuals from the academic community with important knowledge and skills related to research approaches and methods.

Adolescents' Agency in Information Management

In recent years research on parenting has changed stance from one where parents shape child outcomes to an interactive perspective. However this shift is only now transferring to adolescents, with research exploring how the roles that adolescents and parents play in their interactions can lead to problem behaviour. Part of the Hot Topics in Developmental Research series, this book presents the new perspective.One of the primary tasks associated with childhood and adolescence is to shift from being regulated by others to self-regulation and self-control. Because adolescents in Western cultures tend to spend increasingly more time away from their parents (Larson et al., 1996), much attention has been given to how parents continue to regulate their adolescents when the adolescents are not supervised by adults. The majority of research investigating this topic has focused on parents’ attempts to monitor their adolescents’ whereabouts and activities. This body of research has been seriously flawed, however, assuming that parents’ monitoring provides them with information about adolescents’ whereabouts and activities. The use of invalid measures (e.g., measures of parental knowledge, rather than parents’ monitoring behaviors) and unidirectional assumptions (i.e., parent effects) led researchers to conclude prematurely that parents who monitor not only know what their adolescents are doing, but are then able to protect their adolescents from engagement in problematic activities. Recent research revealed these flaws, showing that parents’ knowledge of adolescents’ friends and activities is derived more from adolescents’ disclosure than from parents’ monitoring efforts (Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Stattin & Kerr, 2000). In response, researchers have taken an interest in understanding the processes by which parental knowledge is generated.

Parental Mattering A Qualitative Inquiry Into the Tendency to Evaluate the Self as Significant to One’s Children

Studies of parental identity tend to focus on historical influences or experiences with the other parent of the child and overlook the influence of children on parents. To investigate children’s influence on parental identity, this study examines individuals’ perceived mattering or significance to their school-aged children. Cross-case qualitative analysis of data from 47 parents (n = 30 females, 17 males) reveals that mattering emerges from interactions with children and attention from children. Mattering is not viewed by participants as a global and stable trait but is identified as malleable. Parents also view their obligation and fulfillment of the role as an indication of mattering. As such, mattering helps to define the parental role, and enactment of the parental role enables parents to define themselves as significant to others.

Adolescent Possible Selves as Jointly Constructed in Parent-Adolescent Career Conversations and Related Activities

The purpose of this research project is to describe the possible selves that parents and adolescents introduce and jointly adjust, adopt, maintain, or abandon in conversations about potential careers and related activities over an 8-month period. Data were gathered from 19 parent-adolescent dyads through observation of (a) parents and adolescents during videotaped conversations about the adolescents career-related future, (b) parents and adolescents during video recall of conversations, and (c) logs and telephone monitoring. Findings reveal two broad sets of processes pertaining to the construction of possible selves: “exploring options” and “trying on a possible self.”

Identity Agents: A Focus on Those Purposefully Involved in the Identity of Others

This Special Issue was put together with the intention of deepening our understanding of those individuals and social or cultural institutions that knowingly and intentionally take part in the identity formation of others. Our aim was to place the spotlight on the underlying motivations, practices, beliefs, and goals of the partners of the developing individual in the co-construction of identity, and on the nature of the relationships constructed between these agents of identity formation and those whose identity they wish to influence. Schachter and Ventura (2008) coined the term “identity agents,” referring to those individuals who “actively interact with children and youth with the intention of participating in their identity formation, and who reflectively mediate larger social influences on identity formation” (p. 449). In their study of parents actively involved with their children’s identity development, Schachter and Ventura suggested that identity agency can be understood as consisting of several components. Central among these components were that identity agents are concerned with issues of the youth’s developing social and ego identity; they have goals regarding identity development; they act on such concern and responsibility, implementing practice intended to further their goals; and they reflect on goals and practice, reassessing and refining both. This initial research on parents as identity agents provided the foundation for this Special Issue. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 10:71–75, 2010 Copyright

Unconscious processes in a career counselling case: an action-theoretical perspective

ABSTRACT Although clients and counsellors can often account for their actions in counselling, sometimes the link between the action taken and the larger goal is not apparent. This article accounts for counterproductive, paradoxical actions within the counselling process by addressing unconscious processes as links between immediate actions and larger projects. A career counselling case is presented, the data of which were gathered and analysed through the action-project method. This method includes a video-supported recall procedure, called the self-confrontation interview, as a research and practice means of accessing unconscious aspects of the inter-subjective action of counselling. The complexity of career counselling is illustrated as multiple goals and projects, both conscious and unconscious, are manifest in a single session. Implications for practice include the primacy of the relationship project in career counselling as the relationship project not only contains but reflects other projects such as identity and vocational projects.