Establishing a worker identity is among the most central aspects of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Despite its importance, few measures with acceptable psychometric and conceptual characteristics exist to assess vocational identity statuses. This study reports the development and evaluation of the Vocational Identity Status Assessment (VISA), which is derived from established conceptual models and includes career exploration, commitment, and reconsideration dimensions. Results show that the VISA exhibited metric invariance across a high school and university sample. Cluster analyses demonstrated that the VISA consistently resolved six identity statuses across the two samples, supporting the previously established achieved, moratorium, foreclosed, and diffused statuses along with two additional statuses termed searching moratorium and undifferentiated. The identity statuses predicted differences in participants’ work valences and well‐being with the achieved and diffused statuses respectively exhibiting the most and least favorable characteristics. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research based upon these findings are offered.

Identity development is central to the career development of children and adolescents. This article reviews the literature pertaining to identity development as being composed of career exploration, commitment, and reconsideration and offers some implications for career interventions.

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Prior research suggests that youths' engagement in out-of-school time programs may be a crucial factor linking program participation to positive outcomes during adolescence. Guided by the theoretical concept of flow and by stage-environment fit theory, the present study explored correlates of engagement in youth programs. Engagement was conceptualized as the extent to which youth found the program activities enjoyable, interesting, and challenging. The current study examined how program content, monetary incentives, and youth demographic characteristics were linked to youth engagement among a sample of primarily low-income middle and high school youth attending 30 out-of-school programs (n = 435, 51 % female). Results from multilevel models suggested that program content and staff quality were strongly associated with youth engagement. Youth who reported learning new skills, learning about college, and learning about jobs through activities in the program were more engaged, as were youth who found the staff caring and competent. Results demonstrated that the link between learning content for the future and engagement was stronger for older youth than younger youth. In addition, there was a trend suggesting that providing a monetary incentive was associated negatively with youth engagement. Taken as a whole, these findings have important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in understanding the characteristics of out-of-school time programs that engage older youth.

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Although gender-based occupational segregation has declined in past decades, the world of work remains segregated by gender. Grounded in research showing that individuals tend to choose jobs that match their interests and skills, this study examined the longitudinal associations between gendered activity interests and skills from middle childhood through adolescence and tested gendered interests and skills, measured in adolescence, as predictors of occupational outcomes in young adulthood. Data were collected from 402 participants at four time points— when they averaged 10, 12, 16, and 25 years old. Results revealed that the longitudinal linkages between male-typed interests and skills were bidirectional, that both male-typed interests and skills in adolescence predicted working in male-typed occupations in young adulthood, and that skills, but not interests, predicted income. In contrast, female-typed interests predicted female-typed skills, but not the reverse, adolescent female-typed skills (but not interests) predicted working in female-typed occupations in young adulthood, and there were no links between female-typed interests or skills and income. Discussion focuses on the differential meanings and developmental implications of male-versus female-typed interests and skills.

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