Abstract
Young people transition to adulthood via diverse pathways; among the most significant are those dominated by education, employment, or social disadvantage. These pathways are determined, to a large extent, by the level of well-being and autonomy young people develop to help them face their own realities. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between young people’s psychological well-being and autonomy – key factors in the transition to adulthood – and the relationship these factors have with the main pathways followed during transition. To this end, Ryff’s Model of Psychological Well-being and the Transition to Adulthood Autonomy Scale (EDATVA) were used to evaluate a total of 1148 Spanish and Colombian subjects aged between 16 and 21. Correlations and differences between scores were subsequently analyzed. Subjects were also asked to identify the most relevant aspect of their transition to adulthood as either education, employment, or social disadvantage. Results from all three pathways for transition to adulthood show a trend in which higher levels of well-being correspond to higher levels of autonomy. In general, the results for the young people on the education pathway show high levels of autonomy and well-being, as well as a significantly higher level of critical thinking compared to young people on other pathways. The scores from employed young people reveal a greater capacity for self-organization in relation to the other two pathways. The results for disadvantaged young people show significantly greater socio-political engagement than that of young people on the education and employment pathways. However, the disadvantaged group also displays the lowest level of psychological well-being. These results provide elements for a better understanding of young people’s different transition pathways to adulthood and constitute an important point of reference for future research. They also provide data that may be relevant in guiding potential educational, psychological, and social interventions within this population group.
Highlights
The period between the ages of 16 and 21 spans the end of adolescence and the onset of a developmental stage that was recently termed emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2007; Berger, 2016; Maree and Twigge, 2016)
Returning to the first specific objective of our study – to examine the relationship between dimensions on the autonomy scale and dimensions on the well-being scale for each distinct pathway, considered independently – the results show positive and significant correlations between the dimensions on these two scales, for each of the three pathway groups
One initial finding from this study is that for all three pathways, higher levels of well-being correspond to higher levels of autonomy and vice versa. This finding coincides with results from similar studies (Delbosc and Vella-Brodrick, 2015; Alivernini et al, 2019; Chatzisarantis et al, 2019) in which psychological autonomy is strongly associated with well-being
Summary
The period between the ages of 16 and 21 spans the end of adolescence and the onset of a developmental stage that was recently termed emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2007; Berger, 2016; Maree and Twigge, 2016). Throughout this stage, social relationships, especially family and peer relationships, play an important role in how young adults develop well-being and autonomy (Arnett, 2015; Campione-Barr et al, 2015; Davies et al, 2015; Jorgensen and Nelson, 2018). As stated by Munson et al (2013), socially disadvantaged youth must be studied if we are to understand how they experience the processes of emerging adulthood; until now, such studies have been limited almost exclusively to students and workers
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