Personality maturation among emerging adults and future career success

Young Adults with Lived Foster Care Experience Who Later Experience Houselessness: an Exploratory Latent Class Analysis

Young adults with lived experience in out-of-home care during childhood report later experiences of housing instability as common. Existing literature identifies a host of factors compounding an individual's risk of experiencing houselessness, but research has yet to explore constellations of characteristics which describe youth formerly in care who later become unhoused. This exploratory study leverages a public-private data linkage collaborative to integrate and de-identify child welfare data extracted from a Rocky Mountain state's administrative database and houselessness service utilization data from a regional provider in a large metro area of the state. Linkage and sampling yielded a final sample of 285 youth (ages 18 to 24) formerly in foster care who accessed houselessness services between December 2018 and March 2020 and who had signed required consents. A 22-measure latent class analysis identified three characteristic groups: intensive youth corrections involvement and emancipation from the child welfare system (32% of sample); family-based challenges, neglect, and more moderate youth corrections involvement (41% of sample); and youth behavior and substance use challenges along with family reunification before accessing houselessness services (26%). We found that young women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color were disproportionately represented in the sample compared to the state's population of youth in out-of-home care. Youth with long histories of child welfare placement were a majority of the sample. Implications are discussed. Data-sharing barriers must be addressed to facilitate further research aimed at understanding houselessness within this population.

Career Goal Discrepancy, Career Distress, and Goal Adjustment: Testing a Dual Moderated Process Model in Young Adults

Identifying a large discrepancy in young people’s career goal progress can lead to distress, activating meaning-making, self-regulatory mechanisms aimed at resolving the uncomfortable situation. We assessed these important career-regulatory processes in a theoretical model by testing the indirect effects of career goal discrepancy on goal adjustment (assimilation and accommodation) via career distress, and assessed the conditionality of these effects based on two moderators (career calling and negative career feedback). In a cross-sectional study, we recruited 287 young adults with a mean age of 23.79 years ( SD = 3.35), and tested complex dual moderated process model (OLS regression). Greater career goal discrepancy was associated with more career distress, and, in turn, less assimilative and more accommodative tendencies. These indirect effects depended on the level of career calling and negative career feedback. The findings can be used to tailor interventions to optimise the consequences of identified gaps in young people’s career progress.