This proposal requests support for continuation of the """"""""Youth Development Study,"""""""" now in its fourteenth year. The purpose of the research is to assess the consequences of pathways to adulthood, defined by the timing and sequencing of roles, for mental health and multiple facets of adult behavioral adjustment In the Fall of 1987, a panel of 1,000 ninth graders was selected randomly from the St. Paul, Minnesota public schools; the first data collection took place in the Spring of 1988. Seventy-six percent of the original panel has been retained through the year 2000 data collection. Since 1988, surveys have been administered annually (except 1996); during the first four years, by in-school administration, since 1991, by maiL In 1988 and 1991 the subjects' parents were also surveyed. Prior phases of the project have focused on (1) the contemporaneous influences of multiple forms of work (paid work, work in the home, and volunteering on adolescent mental health, achievement, and behavioral adjustment, and (2) on the implications of these earlier activities for the developing young person during the post high school period. During the next live years, the analyses will continue to draw on the extensive archive that has already been assembled, and additional survey data to be collected (which together will cover the age period from 14-15 to 31.32). Further data collection and analysis will enable the research team to examine the precursors and impacts of diverse pathways to adulthood, at a time when adult work and family roles are becoming consolidated. Central outcomes of interest include mental and physical health, educational and occupational attainment. healthy interpersonal relationships, civic engagement, the effective balancing of multiple commitments (especially work and family roles), illegal/criminal behavior, and other forms of deviance. Taking a dynamic life course perspective and utilizing innovative latent class analysis techniques, the research team will link pathways of life experience and mental health by modeling both the selection to paths, and their consequences through time. Special attention is to be given to the continuities and discontinuities in patterns of time use from adolescence to early adulthood, and their consequences for mental health and adaptation to multiple adult role demands. It is expected that (1) the effects of experiences during this period (education, employment,, marriage, and parenthood) will depend on their timing and sequencing; (2) successful pathways will foster accumulating advantage, accentuating prior differences; and (3) pathways will have differing consequences, depending on the person's prior aspirations and histories of achievement The central purpose of this study is to illuminate basic processes of development and adaptation during this formative period of the life course. The research also has important policy implications in view of the increasingly diversified and individualistic character of the early life course.
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