Social Integration, Stress, and Ambition in Transitions to Adulthood

University Of New Hampshire, Durham NH

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract This study examines how youths' stress exposure, social integration, and aspirations affect their well-being as they transition to adulthood. We focus on youth in an isolated rural region where communities that were once sustained by jobs in pulp and paper mills have experienced the closing of these mills in recent years. Our research explores how youth outcomes,such as health, deviancy, education, and work,are related to family-, school-, and community-related stress experiences, integration, and aspirations. Building on the stress-process literature in sociology, this research likewise examines how sex, age, and socioeconomic differences in well-being are linked to stress, social integration, and aspirations. Finally, this research examines the degree to which links between stress exposure and the above forms of well-being differ depending on youths' levels of social integration and aspirations. We build on an existing two-wave population-based quantitative survey of youth who were in 7th and 11th grades in 2008, and on qualitative interviews with a subsample of 24 7th graders and their mothers. We will collect an additional wave of survey data from the original youth participants, and conduct follow-up interviews with the original qualitative study participants. Our interdisciplinary (e.g., Sociology, Justice Studies, Family Studies, and Education) and mixed-method approach will allow us to examine in-depth and over time the experiences relevant for successful transitions to adulthood in an understudied population facing a unique set of economic and developmental challenges. The broader impacts of our study include our involvement of undergraduate and graduate student assistants across all phases of the research, ranging from data collection and management to analysis and dissemination. Benefits to students include various opportunities to complete senior, MA, and PhD theses and dissertations, and many other possibilities for collaboration on research and outreach with faculty and community leaders. Senior faculty researchers will continue to disseminate project information, results, and policy-relevant material via scholarly journals and national conference presentations, on which student co-authorship across disciplines will be a priority. In addition, our team will continue to establish and foster local collaborative partnerships with the long-term goal of designing, implementing, and evaluating innovative interventions that promote the successful transition to adult roles in rural Communities facing unique economic challenges. In keeping with the University of New Hampshire Carsey Institute's mission of "building knowledge for families and communities," the information gleaned from the project will be the subject of presentations, lectures, policy briefs, and other public service activities relevant to the promotion of youth and young adult well-being locally and nationally. The project will promote scientific inquiry and practice by contributing to stress and life course theory, research, and policy development.