The things they carry: characterizing the biggest problems in the lives of emerging adults

Abstract

Drawing on the writings of 315 undergraduate participants who wrote for four consecutive days, 20 minutes each day, about the biggest problem in their lives (North, Pai, hixon, & holahan, 2011), the present study analyzes the text of the writings to characterize the biggest problems in the lives of emerging adults. Specifically, we used two analytic strategies-content coding by raters and linguistic analysis- to address four questions: (1) what were the biggest problems in participants' lives?; (2) were there gender differences in the types of problems that men and women reported?; (3) what was the relative level of emotional distress between individuals with different types of problems?; and (4) were there gender differences in the level of emotional distress associated with the biggest problem in individuals' lives? Findings confirm some existing ideas about major problems facing emerging adults and spotlight new ideas. Findings also challenge longstanding assumptions about gender differences.