Identity Statuses and Event-Focused Narratives at University Starting Point in Italy

Abstract

depth the identity formation processes in Italian\ud university students starting from previous studies that have\ud provided support for a “postponed Identity”. Given the particular\ud socio-economic difficulties of the Italian context,\ud especially occupational uncertainty, this study assumes that\ud the years of university for Italian students are rather like\ud a time of standby, a period when students are allowed to\ud remain in moratorium (institutionalized) or diffusion statuses\ud and disengage from tasks related to personal and professional\ud identity consolidation. For this purpose, the study\ud focuses initially on the person-centred approach by measuring\ud identity statuses in students attending the first 2 years\ud of university and in students attending the fourth and fifth\ud years of university. Subsequently, it focuses on the first\ud 2 years of university through an event-focused approach,\ud exploring narrative accounts of memorable daily life events\ud perceived as important for identity construction, and to\ud deepen our understanding of the subjective dimension of\ud personal changes. Based on five identity dimensions, the\ud cluster analysis indicated that six identity statuses could\ud be extracted for both students groups: achievement, foreclosure,\ud moratorium, diffused diffusion, carefree diffusion\ud and undifferentiated. Each of these clusters revealed a distinct\ud profile in terms of narrative universes of meanin

Looking forward: Career identity formation and the temporal orientations of young Australians

“…Recently, it has been suggested that postponement should be better acknowledged as a component of the identity formation process (AUTHOR, 2017;Sica, Luyckx, Goossens, Ragozini, & Sestito, 2017). Furthermore, AUTHOR (2017), have proposed the inclusion of postponement as a fourth dimension of identity development.…”

Personal skills for optimal identity development: A person-centered approach in Italian late-adolescents.

“…Previous research has focused on determinants such as personality traits (Klimstra et al, 2012 ; Luyckx et al, 2006 ) and coping strategies (Luyckx et al, 2012 ). Few studies have been carried out to examine variables such as creativity (Sica et al, 2017 ), agency and personal growth initiative (Luyckx & Robitschek, 2014 ). These three are the variables chosen as resources for identity in the current study, because they have been identified, separately, as adaptive resources useful for the individual psycho-social functioning, especially in social contexts that require strong flexibility and autonomy, as specified below.…”

“…The relationship between the emotional aspects of creativity and the process of constructing identity in adolescence is, however, still little investigated (Sica et al, 2017 ), despite the fact that creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996 ) and the fact that creativity could be considered a potent predictor of social problem-solving (Ogoemek, 2011 ) and an “inherent latent power” present in each person (Baran et al, 2011 ).…”

“…Secondly, in order to investigate the relations between identity statuses, PSID and psychosocial functioning, we examined the profile of youth in different identity statuses in terms of agency (Mizokami et al, 2016 ; Crocetti et al, 2012 ; Sica et al, 2017 ), personal growth initiative (Luyckx & Robitsheck, 2014 ), emotional-divergent aspect of creativity (Sica et al, 2017 ), eudaimonic well-being and anxiety/depressive symptoms.…”

“…Thus, we chose to consider both correlates investigated in previous studies (personal growth initiative and agency) to guarantee comparability of results, as well as new correlates (the emotional-divergent aspect of creativity). Specifically, as regard to personal growth and agency, we hypothesized that profiles resembling the achieved status would be characterized by high levels of agency (Mizokami et al, 2016 ; Crocetti et al, 2012 ; Sica et al, 2017 ) and personal growth initiative (Luyckx & Robitsheck, 2014 ); at the same time, we hypothesized that the reverse would be true of profiles which resembled the diffused status.…”