This report presents the results of a short-term, longitudinal study of 176 high school students that extends and clarifies earlier cross-sectional studies of the likely costs and benefits of part-time employment to adolescent development. The earlier studies of employment concomitant with full-time school attendance indicated three general issues warranting longitudinal investigation: the impact of working on the development of responsibility, the impact of working on involvement with and commitment to nonwork activities and relationships, and the impact of working on the socialization of several less-than-desirable attitudes and behaviors. In general, the longitudinal and cross-sectional findings converge in all three areas. Specifically, (a) working facilitates the development of personal responsibility (i.e., self-management) but not social responsibility (i.e., concern for others); (b) the benefits of working to the development of autonomy are substantially greater for girls than for boys; (c) working diminishes involvement in school, family, and peer commitments; (d) working leads to the development of cynical attitudes toward work and the acceptance of unethical work practices; and (e) working leads to the increased use of cigarettes and marijuana. On , balance, it appears that proponents of the earlier and more deliberate integration of adolescents into the work place have overestimated its benefits and underestimated its costs.
The study examined life change in relation to self-reported involvement in five specific types of crime and delinquency among members of a noninstitutionalized sample. A group of 531 in-school youths, age 14 to 19, were asked to report how frequently in the 6 months since school started they had performed each of 26 criminal or delinquent acts and how many of 20 potentially stressful life events they had experienced in the year preceding the start of school. Regression analyses showed that, for both males and females, life change added significantly to age and SES in predicting violence, theft, drug use, property damage, and a group of relatively nonserious delinquent acts. On the basis of social psychological theory and research, possible explanatory mechanisms in the link between life stress and specific forms of crime and delinquency are discussed as part of a proposed life stress-deviance model.
Researchers and policy makers have treated adolescent work experience as a unidimensional phenomenon and have ignored possible differences among jobs along the very dimensions of working posited as developmentally significant: opportunities for learning, initiative and autonomy, and interaction with others. Behavioral observations support the hypothesis that different work settings expose adolescent workers to substantially different experiences. The six job types differ on all indices of opportunity for initiative and autonomy and half the indices of opportunity for social interaction. But, work settings differ little in opportunities for learining and provide few such opportunities. The implications of the place of work experience in the socialization and education of youth are discussed.
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