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The present study examined career adaptability in 100 Israeli emerging adults who were followed from ages 22 to 29. Participants were given an in depth interview and were asked to talk about their current work, difficulties they might have had in the past and how they coped with them. In addition they were asked to elaborate on the extent to which their job fits their interests and is meaningful to them. Analyses of interviews yielded three distinctive career adaptability patterns that were associated with different levels of concurrent wellbeing: Integrated, Compromised, and Vague. A lower level of identified motivation measured seven years earlier predicted membership in the Compromised pattern. A higher level of extrinsic motivation combined with decreased parental support predicted membership in the Vague pattern. Findings are discussed within the framework of the occupational adaptations and compromises that young people must make when approaching the age of 30., (Copyright © 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper examined the relative influence of selection and socialization on alcohol and tobacco use in adolescent peer networks and peer groups. The sample included 1419 Finnish secondary education students (690 males and 729 females, mean age 16 years at the outset) from nine schools. Participants identified three school friends and described their alcohol and tobacco use on two occasions one year apart. Actor-based models simultaneously examined changes in peer network ties and changes in individual behaviors for all participants within each school. Multi-level analyses examined changes in individual behaviors for adolescents entering new peer groups and adolescents in stable peer groups, both of which were embedded within the school-based peer networks. Similar results emerged from both analytic methods: Selection and socialization contributed to similarity of alcohol use, but only selection was a factor in tobacco use., (Copyright © 2010 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We discuss the studies reported in this special issue on the basis of a descriptive framework. We conclude that implicit assumptions-silent voices, as we call them-concerning the transactional influence between person and environment, and concerning the primacy of personal agency exist side by side. We find in the studies both a variable-centred and a person-centred approach, and show that the person-centred approach can complement the variable-centred approach in a fruitful manner. On the other hand, both approaches seem to lead to similar results in the studies reported in this special issue. As a rule, the approaches lead to characterization of categories of adolescents, and moreover they can both be seen as exemplifying transactional thinking in the psychology of adolescence. Personal agency and personality are systematically correlated with developmental outcomes, but there are no strong indications that personal agency and personality are important predictors of later developmental outcomes. Such indications are found to a greater extent as regards the influence of parenting and the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship. Finally, there is evidence that peers have their own specific significance in the exploration of developmental options., (Copyright 2002 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this study we made an effort to identify the kinds of strategies adolescents deploy in achievement context in an unselected sample of Swedish adolescents. The participants were 880 14-15-year-old comprehensive school students (399 boys and 481 girls) from a middle-sized town in central Sweden. Six groups of adolescents were identified according to the strategies they deployed. Four of them, i.e. optimistic, defensive pessimistic, self-handicapping and learned helplessness strategies, were similar to those described previously in the literature. The results showed that membership in the functional strategy groups, such as in mastery-oriented and defensive pessimist groups, was associated with well-being, school adjustment and achievement, and low levels of norm-breaking behaviour. By contrast, membership in the dysfunctional, for example self-handicapping and learned helplessness strategy groups, was associated with low levels of well-being, and of school adjustment, and a higher level of norm-breaking behaviour., (Copyright 2002 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The aim of the study was to investigate the extent to which adolescents' achievement strategies are associated with the parenting styles they experience in their families. Three hundred and fifty-four 14-year-old adolescents completed a Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire and a family parenting style inventory. Analogous questionnaires were also completed by the adolescents' parents. Based on adolescents' report of the parenting styles, four types of families were identified: those with Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Neglectful parenting styles. The results further showed that adolescents from authoritative families applied most adaptive achievement strategies characterized by low levels of failure expectations, task-irrelevant behaviour and passivity, and the use of self-enhancing attributions. Adolescents from neglectful families, in turn, applied maladaptive strategies characterized by high levels of task-irrelevant behaviour, passivity and a lack of self-enhancing attributions. The results provide a basis for understanding some of the processes by which parenting styles may influence adolescents' academic achievement and performance.

Sociocultural context may play an important role in identity development by shaping the opportunities adolescents are facing. To examine this, adolescents living in urban and rural environments were compared in terms of age differences in identity exploration and commitment. Younger (13-14-year-olds) and older (16-17-year-olds) males and females from urban and rural areas in both Australia (n=367) and Finland (n=316) were investigated. The participants completed the Exploration and Commitment Questionnaire which includes items concerning future education, occupation and family. The results showed that the older youths living in Australian urban environments showed higher levels of exploration and commitment concerning both their future education and occupation than the younger ones, whereas there was an age-related decrease in these variables among adolescents living in Australian rural areas. No urban vs. rural differences were found for Finnish adolescents.

In order to study how parent-child interaction, self-esteem and intelligence influence adolescents' orientation to the future, 57 11-year-old and 56 15-year-old adolescents were interviewed about their hopes for the future. The content and extension of each hope, as well as the levels of internality, optimism and realization, were estimated from the answers. The results showed that a high level of family discussion increased interest in a future family. The influences of parental control and family discussion, however, change as adolescents grow older: the more 11-year-olds reported parental control, the less optimistic they were about the future but the more steps they had taken to realize their hopes. On the other hand, the higher the level of family discussion adolescents reported at the age of 15, the more optimistic they were and the more they had realized their hopes. Adolescents with high self-esteem were more internal in their thinking about the future than those with low self-esteem.