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Duke University

 

Professor of Sociology

Director, Program for Research on Education and Development of Youth (REDY)

Duke University
268 Soc/Psych Building
Durham, NC 27708

Phone: 919-660-5614
Fax: 919-660-5623
angel.harris@duke.edu

 

 

My Studies on Adolescents' Aspirations:

Jeremy Staff, Angel Harris, Ricardo Sabates, Laine Briddell. 2010. “Uncertainty in Early Occupational Aspirations: Role Exploration or Floundering?” Social Forces 89:659-83. (Read Article)

Yates, Scott, Angel L. Harris, Ricardo Sabates, and Jeremy Staff.  2010. “Young People’s Ambition and Future Employment Outcomes in the United Kingdom.” Journal of Social Policy, London School of Economics. (Read Article)

Ricardo Sabates, Angel Harris, Jeremy Staff.  2011. “The Long-term Consequences of Misaligned Ambitions: Evidence from the 1970 British Cohort Study.” Social Science Quarterly 92: 959-77. (Read Article)

 

 

 

 

 



  Phase III: Research on Adolescents' Aspirations

 

 

 

 

Scholarship - Phase III

The third strand of my research program deals with youths' aspirations. It is important to remember that youths are making important decisions about their future with the skills they have during adolescence. Therefore, while the focus on academic outcomes is critical, youths' aspirations should also receive substantial attention. As a sociologist who studies social inequlity and youths' transitions to adulthood, I was struck by the lack of research on the substantial number of youth in recent cohorts who do not report any occupational aspirations or report that they do not know what they "want to be" when they grow up. Increasing numbers of young people are facing uncertain combinations of education, training, and non-standard work arrangements. In this context, uncertainty may be beneficial if it leads to continued education, career development, and even enduring partnerships. In contrast, uncertainty may be detrimental if it involves prolonged education without the acquisition of a degree, residential dependence, and frequent movement from job to job in the secondary labor market. Furthermore, research suggests youths’ occupational plans are often based on little knowledge of job requirements.  Some scholars have raised concern that youths give little thought to the steps and plans necessary to achieve their educational and occupational goals. Therefore, my research seeks to address the following questions: Does uncertainty in aspirations vary by race? Is there a cost associated with uncertainty? Are aligned ambitions during adolescence important for shaping and constructing life paths and realizing long-term educational and occupational goals?

Description

My work in this area has been in collaboration with Jeremy Staff (Pennsylvania State University) and Ricardo Sabates (University of Sussex in England).  We have collaborated on a series of studies on the implication of youths’ aspirations for their labor market outcomes in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom (U.K.).  This collaboration emerged from the Young Scholars Research Grant program for junior faculty funded by the Jacobs Foundation. Thus far, two studies from this collaboration have been accepted for publication in major peer-reviewed journals.  

The first study from this strand of research concerns the substantial proportion of adolescents in the U.S. that lack clear occupational aspirations. This uncertainty may benefit socioeconomic attainment if it signifies role exploration, characterized by career development, continued education, and enduring partnerships. By contrast, uncertainty may diminish attainment if it instead leads to aimlessness, involving prolonged education without the acquisition of a degree, residential dependence, and frequent job changes. In a study published in Social Forces with Staff and Sabates (Read Article), I address an important question: do uncertain career aspirations at age 16 affect wage attainments ten years later? The answer is yes. Using nationally representative data from a cohort of young women and men, we find that approximately 10 percent of youth do not know what job they want to hold in young adulthood. Girls and boys who report uncertain occupational aspirations at age 16 have significantly lower wages ten years later than youth with professional aspirations. These associations are reduced when controls for academic ability, school effort, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and measures of educational attainment and family formation in young adulthood are taken into account, but the effects of uncertain aspirations remain strong and statistically significant. These results support the view that uncertainty heightens the risk of labor-market problems.

I also examine the link between adolescents’ aspirations and labor market outcomes in the England.  There have been significant changes in the youth labor market and in the school-to-work trajectories of young people over the last three decades in Britain.  Shifting social and economic conditions resulted in record rises in youth unemployment in the 1980s coupled with the collapse of the traditional route of early school-leaving and rapid entry into employment within the U.K. The transition to adulthood has become more individualized, with educational attainment increasing in its importance for shaping young people‘s life chances—something likely to have impacted especially the poorest and lowest-achieving young people.  Researchers and policy makers within the U.K. have become increasingly interested in issues of young people‘s occupational aspirations, transitions to employment and the antecedents of NEET (not in employment, education or training) status.  However, little research has examined the connection between early uncertainty or misalignment in occupational aspirations and entry into NEET status.

In a study published in Journal of Social Policy, which is based at The London School of Economics and Political Science (Read Article), I examined whether young people who hold uncertain occupational aspirations, or aspirations that exceed likely educational attainment at age 16, are more likely to be NEET than those whose aspirations are certain and aligned with their educational expectations (Yates, Harris, Sabates, Staff 2010). The findings are relevant to the debates on emerging adulthood and the youth labor market.  

Although we have completed our commitment to the junior scholars program at the Jacobs Foundation, I have several more studies on the youth aspiration-labor market link in both the U.S. and the U.K. that are at various stages of development with this group of young scholars. This research partnership has resulted in invited lectures at the University of Surrey, University of London, and the University of Edinburgh and enabled me to make further inroads into international research and to establish a presence in stratification discourse beyond the U.S.

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