Analyzing autobiographical essays written by 72 young adult college students, this study investigates how coming of age concurrently with the internet and related technologies has influenced these young people’s lives. An understanding of how the technology is influencing the various domains of their lives provides a window on what internet use may be like for future generations. Essays revealed insights into four primary domains: self, family, real communities, and virtual communities. Within each of these domains, participants’ responses tended to focus on key dualities. Additionally, these young people report a growing dependency on the internet for activities ranging from managing their daily lives to building and maintaining virtual communities.

Coming of age with the internet A qualitative exploration of how the internet has become an integral part of young people’s lives

This paper explores the notions of time and texture --or the interplay of the temporal and cultural dimensions of social life--as the conceptual foundation for the development of longitudinal qualitative (LQ) methodologies. It illustrates the different ways in which time is theorized among both qualitative and quantitative researchers in order to draw out the creative potential offered by LQ methodologies for understanding the dynamics of everyday life. The paper concludes by exploring how LQ methodologies might be used in the context of childhood research and for revisioning the process of 'growing up'.

Time, texture and childhood: The contours of longitudinal qualitative research

Social science applications of sequence analysis have thus far involved the development of a typology on the basis of an analysis of one or two variables which have had a relatively low number of different states. There is a yet unexplored potential for sequence analysis to be applied to a greater number of variables and thereby a much larger state space. The development of a typology of employment experiences, for example, without reference to data on changes in housing, marital and family status is arguably inadequate. The paper demonstrates the use of sequence analysis in the examination of multivariable combinations of status as they change over time and shows that this method can provide insights that are difficult to achieve through other analytic methods. The data that are examined here provide support to intuitive understandings of clusters of common experiences which are both life course specific and related to socio-economic factors. Housing tenure is found to be of key importance in understanding the holistic trajectories that are examined. This suggests that life course trajectories are sharply differentiated by experience of social housing.

Holistic trajectories: a study of combined employment, housing and family careers by using multiple-sequence analysis

There has been a significant growth in the infrastructure for archiving and sharing qualitative data, facilitating reuse and secondary analysis. The article explores some issues relating to ethics and epistemology in the conduct of qualitative secondary analysis. It also offers a critical discussion of the importance of engaging with the situatedness and contextually embedded nature of data, and ways in which contexts (including research designs and disciplinary and methodological assumptions) are themselves embedded in primary data. I illustrate some strategies for addressing these matters with reference to analyses of two different areas, drawing on research conducted as part of ESRC Timescapes, and highlight some issues for development research.

Qualitative secondary data analysis: Ethics, epistemology and context

Understanding Youth Transition as 'Becoming': Identity, Time and Futurity

The `Inventing Adulthoods' study seeks to document transitions to adulthood reported by over 100 young people living in five contrasting communities in the UK over a five-year period. A principal a...

Critical moments: Choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition

Traditionally adulthood and citizenship have been synonymous. Yet adulthood is changing. In this paper we explore how young people's evolving understandings of adulthood may contribute towards an understanding of citizenship within the broader context of increasingly extended and fragmented transitions. The paper draws on a unique qualitative longitudinal data set in which 100 young people, from contrasting social backgrounds in the United Kingdom, have been followed over a five-year period using repeat biographical interviews. We present first the themes that emerged from a cross-cut analysis of the first of three rounds of interviews distinguishing between relational and individualised understandings of adulthood. We then present a model we developed to capture the ways that young people sought out opportunities for competence and recognition in different fields of their lives. Finally a case study that follows a young woman through her three interviews illustrates how these themes can appear in an indi...

Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

The `Inventing Adulthoods' study seeks to document transitions to adulthood reported by over 100 young people living in five contrasting communities in the UK over a five-year period. A principal aim of the study is to identify `critical moments' in young people's biographies and to explore how these moments are implicated in processes of social inclusion and exclusion. This article reports on an analysis of the first of three rounds of one-to-one interviews. We begin by mapping young people's critical moments, exploring the relationship between the social and geographical location in which they live and the kinds of events that they report as having particular biographical significance. We suggest that the character of these `critical moments' is socially structured, as are young people's responses to them. The argument is illustrated by case studies that show the interaction of choice, chance and opportunity in three young people's lives.

Critical moments: choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition to adulthood

**** Research Associate de la Universidad de South Bank en Londres. “Momentos decisivos son ocasiones en las cuales los eventos se unen de forma tal, que el individuo se encuentra ante una encrucijada en su existencia, o donde una persona adquiere información que trae consecuencias decisivas para él o ella” (1991: 113). Estos momentos pueden darse en puntos de transición reconocidos; pero, para Giddens, su importancia radica en la interacción entre el riesgo y la oportunidad que ellos representan, y en la necesidad que tiene el individuo de superarlos por medio de un proyecto reflexivo del self. Este proyecto reflexivo, es un proceso de construcción de identidad que acarrea el sostenimiento de una narrativa biográfica que a pesar del riesgo, la incertidumbre y la oportunidad, es coherente si es reexaminada continuamente. “Fateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a cross roads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences” (Giddens, 1991: 113). These moments can occur at recognized transition points, but for Giddens their importance lies in the interaction of risk and opportunity which they represent, and the need for the individual to surmount them through a reflexive project of self. This reflexive project, a process of identity construction, entails sustaining a coherent, if continuously revised, biographical narrative in the face of risk, uncertainty and opportunity.

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3989324.pdf

Robert Bell

Papers

Critical moments: Choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition

Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

Critical moments: choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition to adulthood

En ese momento todos estaban contra mí: momentos críticos en las narrativas de transición de los jóvenes

Youth values and transitions: Young people's participation in the research process