Youth purpose and the perception of social supports among African-American girls

Abstract

Purpose in adolescence is linked to positive developmental outcomes, and yet little is known about how youth purpose is supported by people and institutions that occupy the ecologies in which young people are embedded. Little is known too about how African-American youths envision themselves in the future, and understanding the nature of their purposes may uncover critical information about these adolescents’ aspirations. Associations between purpose and social supports were examined in a sample of 46 adolescent girls in the southeastern United States (Mean age = 12.83 years; SD = 1.14 years) (African-American/Black = 78.3%; Multiracial = 15.2%; White/Caucasian = 6.5%). Qualitative content analysis of interviews identified five forms of purpose experienced by these young people. Surveys measured perceived presence and importance of social supports of parents, teachers, close friends, classmates, and school environment, as well as emotional, informational, appraisal, and instrumental support across these sources. Adolescents with more diffuse purpose forms reported greater social support from school, and in some cases, from teachers, than did adolescents with more complete purpose forms. The diffuse purpose form groups reported that school support was more important to them than did the other groups. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• schooling
• citizenship
• ethnicity

Notes

1. The measure and more information about its questions can be requested from the Stanford Center on Adolescence ([email protected]).

2. A detailed description of this type of qualitative content analysis can be found in Boyatzis (1998). An alternate description specific to analysis for purpose form with a different sample is described in Moran (2009).

3. Our test choice was based on prevalent skew and kurtosis across social support measure distributions. Parametric analyses however support the results.