Problem Behavior Theory and the Transition to Young Adulthood

Abstract

This chapter provides a summary of the theory and findings of the Young Adult Follow-Up Study, a two-wave, longitudinal research project that followed samples of high school and college youth who had participated, some eight and nine years earlier, in a four-wave longitudinal study. By the time of the second, young-adult data wave, the high school youth had reached the ages of 25, 26, and 27 and the college youth had reached the age of 30. This study, the first application of Problem Behavior Theory in young adulthood, yielded important developmental findings about this phase of the life course and about the theory. With regard to the theory, the cross-sectional, explanatory account it provided of problem behavior in young adulthood was as powerful as it had been in adolescence, accounting again for 40 % to 50 % of the variance. Equally impressive, the theoretical concepts measured in the fourth wave of the earlier longitudinal study, i.e., in adolescence, were strongly predictive of problem behavior variation in young adulthood, almost a decade later. With regard to psychosocial and behavioral development across this transition, several important findings emerged. First, while there was a great deal of change between the two life stages, there was a great deal of continuity and stability in that change. Second, the overall direction of change was toward greater conventionality, a reversal of the direction of change that took place within the adolescent years. Third, problem behavior in young adulthood co-varied just as it did in adolescence and retained its organization as a syndrome. Finally, there was little evidence that involvement in problem behaviors in adolescence, even heavy involvement, had mortgaged the future or compromised the lives of these young people.