Emerging Adulthood MoA/IDEA-8 Scale Characteristics From Multiple Institutions

Abstract

We tested psychometric properties of the Markers of Adulthood (MoA) importance scale and a revised Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood (IDEA-8) in a large, diverse multisite and multinational sample the Emerging Adulthood Measured at Multiple Institutions 2 project. We used multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel alphas to examine external validity and internal consistency of the scales. We also performed correlational and exploratory multilevel analyses to determine the extent to which emerging adulthood dimensions overlap across scales. The IDEA-8 subscales demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties. Our research suggests that recent approaches to combine the MoA markers provide four modestly reliable factors, but perceptions of adulthood varied considerably as a function of sample. We recommend that the structure of these marker items be examined for any given sample, since their relative importance seems to vary, not just across time but also sample location.

Reconstructing Adulthood: Revising the Markers of Adulthood Scale for Increased Ecological Validity

“…Over the last two decades (cf. Badger et al, 2006;Faas et al, 2018;Fosse, et al, 2015), researchers explored the transition to adulthood and related milestones to update the MoA scale and determine a framework that incorporates valid, reliable subscales.…”

Do Institutional Characteristics Predict Markers of Adulthood?: A Close Replication of Fosse and Toyokawa (2016)

“…Further, the reliability of relational maturity was quite poor, weakening interpretations related to this construct. Faas et al (2018) explored other approaches, and there is suggestive evidence of a fifth factor that should be considered or that some items need to be reassigned. Perhaps the null findings reflect that the constructs use the wrong combination of items or the need to identify new items.…”

“…Fosse and Toyokawa (2016) reduced 20 of the MoA identified by Arnett (1994, 1997) into 4 theoretically derived dimensions (role transitions, norm compliance, relational maturity, and independence) following previous work (Badger, Nelson, & Barry, 2006; Nelson et al, 2007; also see Fosse, Grahe, & Reifman, 2016). Because Faas et al (2018) examine the psychometric properties of these items, and because our question is confirmatory rather than exploratory, we employed the constructs used by Fosse and Toyokawa (2016). However, the explicit items included in each dimension are described in the Materials section, and conceptual descriptions are provided here.…”

Registered Reports With Developmental and Secondary Data: Some Brief Observations and Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Although there were certainly some bumps along the road, the project generally indicated to us that registered reports with secondary data are not only possible but that they are desirable. Some of the considerations that arose in the five papers in this collection included how to fit measurement models (Faas et al, 2020), conducting power analyses when using subgroups of unknown size (Chalk et al, 2020), analyses based on multilevel models when the amount of variance at each level is not known (Grahe et al, 2020), creating a reasonable set of alternative models to compare to the target model (Barlett et al, 2020), and creating indices from items without knowing how well they will hang together (Leighton et al, 2020). In all cases, authors needed not only to rely on the best possible prior information to make informed decisions but also to think through different contingency plans if that prior information did not comport with reality.…”