"Supporting Youth Purpose in Adolescence: Youth-Adult Relationships as Ecological Assets"

Postdoctoral researcher Mark Vincent B. Yu is first author of a chapter in the book The Ecology of Purposeful Living Across the Lifespan. The title of the chapter is “Supporting Youth Purpose in Adolescence: Youth-Adult Relationships as Ecological Assets.”

 Co-author is Nancy L. Deutsch from the University of Virginia.

Yu is a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow. His scholarly interests include socio-ecological and strengths-based approaches to youth development. Under the sponsorship of Professor Sandra Simpkins, Yu is researching high-quality and culturally responsive math afterschool program practices for under-represented minority youth.

Abstract
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Having or developing a sense of purpose is an important component of positive adolescent development. However, there is limited empirical understanding of how youth purpose develops and what aspects of youth’s ecologies best support purpose development during adolescence. This chapter seeks to provide insight into how significant adults, both parents and non-parental adults, serve as ecological assets that may support purpose development for youth during adolescence. We begin by discussing how developmental and ecological theories can inform the broader literature on youth purpose. We then present findings from a study examining the development, characteristics, and influence of youth–adult relationships across multiple contexts and over key transition points across adolescence, focusing on the ways in which relationships with parents and other significant adults can play a key role in cultivating and nurturing purpose development during adolescence. We close by discussing implications for understanding effective ways of supporting purpose development during adolescence and the benefits of mixed methods research for those aims.