Identity trajectories and narratives during the transition out of undergraduate education among Georgian emerging adults.

Abstract

The transition out of university education and into the workforce represents a turning point in terms of the evolution of one's goals, roles, responsibilities, relationships, and lifestyle. For this reason, this transition might create important challenges and opportunities for identity formation. The present mixed-method longitudinal study examined identity formation processes in a sample of Georgian final-year undergraduate students over an 11-month period at four different points before and after graduation. At time 1, 369 participants (20% male, mean age = 21.83) completed self-report questionnaires. Life narratives were collected from a subsample of 40 individuals who participated at the last (i.e., fourth) time point. Latent class growth analysis (LCGA) was used to identify developmental typologies of identity formation based on dimensions of commitment and exploration, collected at all four time points. Four trajectory classes-Moratorium, Foreclosure, Troubled Diffusion, and Undifferentiated-were identified. Qualitative results suggest that childhood and family relationships, independence/autonomy/adulthood, education/occupation, and romantic relationships represented salient identity related themes among the study participants. Narratives of trajectory representatives provided insights and the phenomenological accounts of emerging adults' experiences during the transition and highlight specific characteristics of each trajectory class.

Testing exploratory narrative processing as a mechanism of change in identity status processes over 4 years in college-going emerging adults.

“…Conceptually, individuals who have become distressed and withdraw from engagement in identity commitments or exploration (i.e., ruminative exploration) could also be seen as possibly lacking in autobiographical reasoning (i.e., not seeing connections between past events and the current or future self). In line with the general concept of narrative processing driving stability and change within identity status, a recent study found participant narratives within each identity status did have some common themes that could illuminate the thought processes and life events that may contribute to identity formation (e.g., participants' familial, educational, and romantic experiences all seemed to influence their identity formation processes and subsequent identity status; Skhirtladze et al, 2022). Thus, we test whether the process of narration is a possible mechanism for changes in dual-cycle identity dimensions over time.…”

Identity formation in adolescence and emerging adulthood: a process-oriented and applied perspective

“…We highlight two integrative perspectives of specific relevance to the research reviewed herein. Process-oriented approaches need to be integrated with narrative approaches to capture not only identity processes at work but identity content as well through the lived experiences of individuals (Hihara et al, 2021;Skhirtladze et al, 2022;Syed, 2020).…”