Becoming an Emerging Adult: Demographic and Cultural Factors, Coping Style, and Coping Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Exploration and Commitment during the Resolution of an Emerging Adult's Identity Crisis.

Abstract

Throughout the course of human history, individuals have been forced to face a vast array of stressful situations. Each of these experiences and encounters required adequate management, if not to ensure survival, then to provide education or protection. Simultaneously, human beings were diversifying, establishing groups based on physical and cognitive representations, values, beliefs, and other environmentally based concepts. What appeared to emerge is the idea of culture, a concept developed out of vastness that is the human being, and a need for individual identities. The current investigation examined these concepts, guided by six research hypotheses (a) when combined, the demographic and cultural factors of age, gender, ethnicity, religious or spiritual affiliation, and religious or spiritual service attendance are significant predictors of levels of exploration and commitment during identity conflict resolution of emerging adults, (b) when combined, the demographic and cultural factors of age, gender, ethnicity, religious or spiritual affiliation, and religious or spiritual service attendance are significant predictors of selected dispositional and situation specific coping approaches, (c) when combined, the demographic and cultural factors of age, gender, ethnicity, religious or spiritual affiliation, and religious or spiritual service attendance are significant predictors of the self-efficacy of implemented coping styles, (d) dispositional and situation specific coping behaviors are significant predictors of levels of exploration and commitment during identity conflict resolution, (e) self-efficacy in the implemented coping behaviors is a significant predictor of levels of exploration and commitment during identity conflict resolution, and (f) when combined, dispositional coping, situation specific coping, and self-efficacy of implemented coping behaviors are significant predictors of levels of exploration and commitment during identity conflict resolution. A sample (n = 246), drawn from a public college campus in the Southeastern United States, was asked to complete a demographic questionnaire and four self-report questionnaires aimed at exploring each of the six research hypotheses. Collected data were analyzed using hypothesis specific multiple regression analyses. The regressions suggested that selection of various coping styles are predicted by demographic and cultural variables. It was further suggested that the selected coping styles and a combination selected coping style and self-efficacy of the selected style are predictive of exploration and commitment during the resolution of the emerging adult identity crisis. Accompanying the results are theoretical and conceptual implications, limitations of the findings, and implications for practice and research.