Section G: Attitudes to Work

This section was asked of all respondents regardless of whether they were currently working or not. It looked at ideal and expected career, and attitudes/values towards work and other aspects of life.

G1 Occupational aspirations

Question G1 asked the Young Person what job they would really like to get in the future (G1a) and what job they expect to get (G1b). Teenage career aspirations have been found to predict occupational outcomes in their thirties, even taking account of family background and cognitive ability (Schoon & Polek, 2011). There has been a lack of research on occupational aspirations in Ireland so Growing Up

in Ireland could provide important insights into the influence of family and school factors on the formation of such aspirations.

G2 Things to look for in a job

Choice of career is an important decision that requires caution and serious consideration. People’s career choice is influenced by a variety of factors; some people have intrinsic reasons for choosing a job, such as meaningfulness of the work, while others have extrinsic reasons, such job security or high income. Intrinsic work values in young adulthood have been found to be predictive of intrinsic values in adulthood as well as greater career and life satisfaction (Chow et al., 2017).

Question G2 listed a number of factors a person may consider when choosing a job. The Young Person was asked to choose the three factors that they would consider most important to them.

G3 Adult Identity Resolution Scale

A number of commentators have pointed to a more prolonged period of transition to adulthood, with research indicating that many young people do not consider themselves adults until their early- to mid-twenties (Piotrowski, Brzezińska, & Luyckx, 2015). This can be partially explained by higher levels of participation in tertiary education and changing economic conditions contributing to increasingly precarious trajectories for young people (Côté, 2002). Furthermore, other aspects of transition such as buying a house, partnership formation and parenthood have happened at older ages. The prolonged transition into adulthood is associated with a number of negative outcomes. Schwartz et al (2010) found that young people who considered themselves adults were more likely to avoid risky behaviours, such as drug misuse, risky sexual practices and driving while intoxicated. Nelson & Barry (2005) also found that individuals who perceived themselves to be adults had a better sense of their own identity and were at less risk of being depressed.

At age 17/18 years of Growing Up in Ireland, the Adult Identity Resolution scale was used to measure the extent to which the Young Person consider themselves to be an adult. The scale is a subscale of the Identity Resolution Index and has been used in other similar longitudinal studies (such as the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England). The scale consisted of three questions scored on a five point scale from 1 entirely true to 5 not at all true. This was later reverse coded from 4 to 0 for scoring. The scale has been found to have good internal reliability α= .79-.84 (Luyckx et al, 2008). Cronbach alpha at age 17/18 years of Growing Up in Irelandwas α=.72.

G4 Importance of areas of life

There is growing interest in the concept of purpose and what it means for individuals to have purpose in their life. Researchers have recently recognised purpose as a vital indicator of adolescent well-being (Malin et al, 2014). Many different approaches have been used to categorise purpose; for example, Hill et al. (2010) found that young people found purpose through happiness, religion, financial and occupational dimensions of their lives.

Question G4 was a 12 item measure which asked respondents to rate the relative importance of different aspects of life on a six-point scale. It was based on a measure used in two Youth surveys of the German Youth Institute and the Growing Up in Germany (DJI – AID: A) study. The aspects of their lives include: parents and siblings; partnership; health care; religion; health; politics; and engagement in associations and organisations. Items are rated on a scale from 1-6 where 1=not important and 6=very important.

G5 Belief in the value of work

Belief in the value of work is the degree to which an individual wants to be employed and views being employed as important (Jackson et al, 1983). People's work values develop in childhood and have been shown to reflect their parents' positions in the occupational structure. However, work values are not stable and are subject to change throughout the life course (Johnson, 2002).

The Belief in the Value of Work scale is a five-item measure examining how a person values work and being employed. A higher score indicates a belief that employment is important. This scale was developed by researchers on the ESRC 16-19 Initiative research programme. The scale contains five statements rated on a four point scale from 1 strongly agree to 4 strongly disagree; these statements include ‘a person must have a job to feel a full member of society’ and ‘having almost any job is better than being unemployed’. The scale has reasonable internal reliability with alphas of .62 and .63 (from the first and third wave respectively of the ERC 16-19 Initiative research project). Cronbach alpha at age 17/18 of Growing Up in Irelandwas α= .57.

G6 Support for sex equality

There has been a huge change in women’s life patterns. In the past, women were expected to take a more nurturing role and work-full time in the home. Men, on the other hand, were seen as the head of the household and were expected to provide for the family financially (Blackstone, 2003). While gender roles have changed with more women staying longer in education and acquiring higher-ranked positions, women are still being discriminated against, for example, in relation to salary (Morgan McKinley, 2016).

The Support for Sex Equality scale measures gender discrimination. This scale was also developed by researchers on the ESRC 16-19 Initiative research programme. The scale contains six statements rated on a four point scale from 1 strongly agree to 4 strongly disagree. These statements include ‘women are as capable in senior positions as men’ and ‘it is less important for a woman to go out to work than it is for a man’. Reliability for this scale in the ESRC wave three was .79. Reliability for this scale at age 17/18 of GUI was α= .82.

G7 Ten Item Personality Inventory

Personality includes one’s motives, thoughts, feelings and behavioural tendencies (McCrae & John, 1992). The Big Five framework, one of the most widely used and extensively researched models of personality, suggests that individual differences in personality can be classified into five broad,

empirically derived domains: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Personality has been widely studied due to its relationship to a number of positive and negative outcomes. Personality has consistently been demonstrated in the literature to be related to mental health; in particular, it has been shown that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness are associated with depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Low extraversion is also associated with social phobia and depression (Kotov et al, 2010). Prosocial behaviour is strongly related to high agreeableness and conscientiousness (Kanacri et al, 2014; Carlo et al, 2005). Aspects of personality are also linked to temperament as a young child (Caspi & Silva, 1995), as measured in earlier waves of Growing Up in Ireland.

Measure

Personality was measured using the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). This was the same measure used at age 13 to measure personality, when the scale was completed by Parent One and Two about the Young Person. At this stage of the study, the Young Person also completed the scale to provide both an external and self-assessed measure of the Young Person’s personality and also to check for consistency.

The TIPI is a ten-item scale measuring the five aspects of personality: Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. Each personality dimension consists of two statements with two descriptors for each. For example, in the case of extraversion: (a) extroverted, enthusiastic (b) reserved, quiet. Both responses are then combined (using reverse scoring where necessary) and divided by two to reveal the score for that measure. Each of the ten items was rated on a seven-point scale, with answer categories ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly.

Psychometric Information

This measure of the Big-Five personality is the favoured approach in a study such as Growing Up in

Ireland as, while it may be inferior to the standard multi-item instrument, it is extremely brief and has

been recommended by Gosling et al (2003) as an appropriate measure when personality is not the main topic of interest. Gosling et al (2003) noted the scale has good test-retest reliability (r= .72). The authors also report convergent correlations between the TIPI and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (John & Srivastava, 1999) of .87, .70, .75, .81, .65 for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience. Although alpha values for this measure are lower than desirable (alphas of .68, .40, .50, .73, .45 for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience), the measure was not designed with internal consistency in mind as it was developed to measure very broad domains, with only two items per domain (Gosling et al, 2003). The alpha values at age 17/18 of Growing Up in Ireland were .57, .23, .42, .61, .32 for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Consciousness, Emotional stability and Openness to Experience. With such a small number of items in each dimension, other researchers have pointed out

drinking and that Agreeableness was negatively associated with anti-social behaviour, providing evidence of construct validity (Williams et al., forthcoming).