Browsing by Subject "Young adults"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The development and trajectory of parent-child conflict during College.
    (2012-07) Bahrassa, Nazneen F.
    This two-study investigation examined parent-child conflict during young adulthood from the perspective of college students. Study 1a utilized a mixed-method approach to examine the content and resolution of parent-child conflict. Four qualitative themes of the content of conflict, as well as conflict resolution, were found and compared to quantitative measures of family functioning, mental health, and physical health (Study 1a). Additionally, in a subset of the Study 1 sample (Study1b), students who reported parent-child conflict reported higher frequencies of conflict, less perceived family support, and more psychological distress than those students who did not report conflict. Study 2 examined trajectories of parent-child conflict using quantitative longitudinal data spanning three points of time during college. Using latent class growth analysis, four distinct trajectories were found. The results demonstrate the importance of continuing to study parent-child relationships during the young adult years.
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    Do They Care Anymore?: Examining Effects of Exogenous Shocks on Political Interest and News Avoidance
    (2023) Armstrong, Serena
    The COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 election, police brutality, and Black Lives Matter protests led to a heightened, and divisive, political environment in the US. Collectively these events served as an exogenous shock, a prolonged and widespread crisis that made it difficult to reconstitute life, to Americans. This study examines impacts and perceived effects that exogenous shocks can have on political interest and news engagement levels of young adults. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, this research provides insight that the level of importance that young adults attribute to holding a high political interest is high, even when not engaged themselves due to perceived negativity and aggression associated with politics and news. Many of those who previously held high levels of interest and engagement before the exogenous shock hit a ceiling and then the floor in terms of their interest due to becoming overwhelmed, while many who had not been previously involving themselves had a wake-up call and more steady rise in terms of their interest and engagement with news and politics. These findings can inform the current state of politics in the eyes of young adults, how to approach news and politics with young adults, and the possibilities of mitigating related effects.
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    Hmong American College Women's Experiences of Parent-Child Relationships
    (2013-07) Peng, Shuling
    This qualitative study examines the parent-child relationships of Hmong American college women. Fourteen women in their junior or senior year from five Midwestern colleges or universities participated in the study. Symbolic interaction theory was used as a guiding framework and a phenomenological method was employed to understand the Hmong American college women's lived experiences of independence from and closeness to their parents and the perception of their role and identity in their interactions with parents. Analyses of the interviews revealed seventeen domains in total under three primary themes, including (1) I am more independent, (2) I am closer to my parents, (3) I am struggling to find a balance. The emerging developmental task for these college-age Hmong American women is to successfully negotiate roles and identities while balancing both cultures. Implications of the study are also discussed.
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    In the system for too long: former foster youth and the structural ambivalence towards mental health
    (2014-08) Baiocchi, Arturo
    A growing research literature documents that young people who "age out" of foster care (after turning 18 or in some states 21) frequently encounter challenging obstacles during their transition into adulthood, and in particular are susceptible to poor mental health and substance abuse problems throughout their early twenties. Drawing from an 8-month longitudinal study of 26 young people transitioning out of care, the dissertation reports on the conflicted relationship that some former foster youth have with service providers, mental health programs and ideas of seeking help more generally, during their transition out of care. The dissertation argues that many former foster youth endorse conventional health beliefs about the efficacy of mental health treatments, but are nonetheless ambivalent about re-integrating themselves with what they perceive as an inconsistent and untrustworthy system of social services and public supports. This sense of what I describe as "structural ambivalence " reflects the inconsistent and contradictory forms of support that many foster youth received while wards of the state, and underpins many of their decisions as young adults to avoid and resist prolonged engagement with social services. Structural ambivalence has implications for meso-level theories of health seeking behavior, and in particular recent frameworks that emphasize the role that social networks and culture play in shaping the dynamic engagement that young consumers have with mental health treatments. This conceptual framework also highlights the contradictory logics of welfare and public health institutions more broadly in the US, and the troubling situation that former foster youth find themselves in while navigating these public systems during their uncertain transition to adulthood.