Ingrid Schoon

University College London | UCL · Institute of Education

Sense of personal agency (SPA) is crucial for adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment and well-being. The relationships with parents and peers, as well as the adolescent’s sex, have been suggested as important correlates of adolescents’ SPA. Nevertheless, no prior study has adopted a gender perspective to analyze how the intertwining of relationships...

Developmental science suggests that the consequences of mental health problems for life-course outcomes may depend on the timing of their onset. This study investigated the extent to which mental health predicted educational attainment at ages 17, 20, and 25 and whether gender moderated the links between mental health and educational attainment. It...

Academic agency is recognized as an important predictor of higher education attainment among the general population during the school-to-work transition. However, there is little evidence on whether (a) academic agency is associated with higher education attainment among young people facing education difficulties (i.e., lower attainers), (b) academ...

Although the literature recognizes the relevance of sense of agency during adolescence, little is known about which factors can promotes or undermines this belief. Identifying the factors that determine adolescents' sense of agency is a challenging task that must consider influences assessed at both the individual and structural levels for a more c...

COVID-19 has challenged societies and our educational systems in particular, with dramatic changes to established practices and imposing new challenges. As a consequence, vast differences emerged in how individual students, teachers, and parents, different schools, and different educational systems managed to cope with this unprecedented crisis. As...

For noncollege-bound youth, swiftly finding a satisfying job upon exiting compulsory schooling might support adjustment. Yet, youths' own job perceptions have rarely been considered in school-to-work transition research. Sequence analysis of monthly occupational status over 4 years (ages 16-20) in a low socioeconomic status Canadian sample overrepr...

COVID-19 has altered adolescents' opportunities for developing and strengthening interpersonal skills and proficiencies. Using data from adolescents in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom, we examined the relation between internalizing symptoms assessed pre-pandemic or when pandemic-related restrictions were lifted (Time 1) and associa...

There is persistent evidence showing that care leavers tend to have lower educational outcomes compared to their peers. There is, however, less knowledge of whether this educational disadvantage transfers to the second generation. This study adopts a developmental contextual life‐course approach to examine: (a) the extent of educational inequality...

There are growing concerns about the number of children and young people, who are “Not in Education, Employment, or Training” (NEET). The literature suggests that further research is warranted to help understand what can be done to reduce the number of pupils at risk of NEET, to enable a successful transition into education, employment, or training...

Although literature states that individual, relational, and contextual factors contribute to adolescents’ sense of agency, more research is needed to clarify and understand how adolescents develop this belief over time. The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of the sense of agency during adolescence, specifically across high s...

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted the educational sector on a global front. A plethora of research has been conducted to better understand the effects that the pandemic had on education as a whole, including investigations into different topics (e.g., school closures, e-teaching and learning, mental and physical health), populations (e.g.,...

Young people navigate an increasingly uncertain and precarious employment market. They have to mobilise and use psychosocial resources necessary to adapt to a changing career landscape and employment opportunities. Guided by career development theories, this study asks if school-based career preparation activities can support the development of car...

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted the educational sector on a global front. A plethora of research has been conducted to better understand the effects that the pandemic had on education as a whole, including investigations into different topics (e.g., school closures, e-teaching and learning, mental and physical health), populations (e.g.,...

This paper explored differences in youth life satisfaction across and within countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. A central finding was the flattening, or even the reversal, of the U-shaped age pattern in life satisfaction in some countries. Life satisfaction declined to a greater extent among youth aged 15 to 30 years than among people aged 31...

Although there is a growing interest in the concept of sense of personal agency in adolescence and young adulthood, its operationalization and assessment have been inconsistent. We propose and test a preliminary assessment model of sense of agency combining four of the most relevant indicators suggested by the literature for its assessment (setting...

School engagement in adolescence is often associated with better academic performance at school, but what are the longitudinal associations between school engagement and adult educational and employment status? The current study explored these longitudinal associations using data spanning 40-years of life, from the 1970 British Cohort Study. School...

Die Covid19Pandemie hat das Leben junger Menschen weltweit in vielerlei Hinsicht beeinflusst (OECD 2021), so auch den Übergang von der Schule in Ausbildung und Beruf. Je nach den Strukturen und Bedingungen im jeweiligen Land stehen Jugendliche vor verschiedenen Herausforderungen. Deutschland und Großbritannien beispielsweise unterscheiden sich nich...

While there is ample evidence of the decline in mental health among youth during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, less is known about the determinants of recovery, which is the focus of this study. Drawing on a stress process framework, this study examines the associations of changes in direct, pandemic-related, and indirect, lockdown-related st...

The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of sense of agency across high school, analyzing whether these trajectories are influenced by attachment to parents over time, as well as adolescent’s sex, psychosocial risk in baseline, and pandemic stress. The sample includes 467 Portuguese adolescents (59.3% were females; Mage = 15.58...

This study examined the prevalence, magnitude, and predictors of the aspiration–attainment gap (AAG) after the school-to-work transition. We operationalized the AAG as the discrepancy between the socioeconomic status (SES) of young people’s realistic occupational aspirations and that of the position they actually attained. As a case in point, we in...

This paper examines the perceived effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the learning of job skills and on education. The context is post-Brexit Britain. We find that 47% of young people in a representative sample perceive a loss of learning of job skills, while a sizeable minority (17%) judge that the pandemic improved matters. The perception of skil...

Embora exista um interesse crescente no conceito do sentido de agência pessoal na adolescência e na idade adulta emergente, a sua operacionalização e avaliação têm sido inconsistentes. O presente estudo propõe e testa um modelo preliminar de avaliação das crenças de agência pessoal, combinando quatro indicadores apontados pela literatura como os ma...

Purpose In Great Britain, few studies documented mental health trends in young adults in the years preceding 2020, the mental health dimensions affected, and how these compare with changes observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Long-term trends in mental health among 16–34 year old men and women between 1991 and 2018, and changes between 2...

Objectives: Children with experience of out-of-home care (OHC) are at an increased risk of adverse outcomes in later life, including poorer levels of psycho-social adjustment. Less is known about the intergenerational transmission of the trauma associated with OHC and psychosocial outcomes in mid-adulthood, particularly during a major health pande...

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were widespread concerns about young people’s labour market prospects. The COVID-19 youth economic activity and health monitorNote (YEAH) project at University College London (UCL) in collaboration with Statistics Canada and other institutes in Europe aimed to shed light in this area by examining the p...

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected young people aged 16–25 years and has brought about a major increase in mental health problems. Although there is persisting evidence regarding SES differences in mental health status, there is still little knowledge of the processes linking SES to young people's mental health, in particular during...

Guided by attachment theory, we explored in the current study the links between parental emotion-coaching, attachment to parents and adolescent's sense of agency. Further, we examined a possible mediating role of adolescent’s attachment to parents in the association between parental emotion-coaching and sense of agency. All models control for cumul...

The transition to adulthood has become more prolonged, complex, and risk-laden over the past two decades. These changes may contribute to the decline in wellbeing observed among young adults. We test the role of reaching different transition milestones on life satisfaction by ages 25-26 among men and women born 20 years apart in 1970 and 1989-90, u...

It is well documented that care-experience can lead to more problematic post-16 transitions and poorer adult outcomes, but less is known about what works to lessen the associations. This research addresses six of the seven key areas of concern identified in the 2013 Care Leaver Strategy – education, employment, finance, health, housing and on-going...

Background Despite concerns about mental health problems among those aged 16–24 in England, which social groups have been most at risk, both over the past decade and during the COVID-19 pandemic, remains unclear. Methods We examined trends in psychological distress among young adults 16–24 years old in England using data from the UK Household Long...

Previous research has shown that parental educational aspirations for their children are an important predictor of children's academic attainment. However, recent studies have pointed to potential negative effects, in particular if there is a mismatch between parental educational aspirations and the aspirations of their children. This study examine...

Changes across education, employment, and family life over the past 20 years challenges the capacity of previously established social role combinations to continue representing the experiences of young men and women born since the late 1980s. Latent class analysis was used to derive patterns of role combinations at ages 25–26 in those growing up in...

Introduction Transitions into work and family life during young adulthood exacerbate differences in the progression of smoking over the life-course. Few have considered how changes in smoking and the transition to adulthood in the past two decades have influenced these relationships over time. Methods We compared the distribution of smoking at age...

Children who experience household dysfunction often report more developmental problems and lower educational attainment. A question, however, is whether these lower outcomes are caused by the household dysfunction itself, or by other (pre-existing) factors, such as growing up in poverty. Based on the extended family stress model, we derived hypothe...

This briefing presents new evidence regarding young people’s career readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic, examining their career expectations and how well their education has prepared them for navigating the transition from education to employment.

Few have examined how employment is linked to trends in mental health among young adults across economic contexts in more recent years. To better understand the burden of non-employment and mental distress in this age group, this study examines the association of short-term (<1 year) and long-term (1+ year) out-of-work status with mental health acr...

This study examined the prevalence and predictors of the aspiration-attainment gap (AAG) after the school-to-work transition. We operationalized the AAG as the discrepancy between the socioeconomic status (SES) of young people's realistic occupational aspirations and that of the position they actually attained. As a case in point, we investigated n...

This study draws on the nationally representative British Birth Cohort Study (BCS70) to examine (1) the association between social background and early socio‐emotional and cognitive competences at age 5 and (2) the relative and independent contributions of early socio‐emotional and cognitive competences to educational and socio‐economic attainment...

This briefing presents new evidence surrounding young people’s employment, learning, well-being, and future expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these are connected. It does so through the reports of a representative sample of young people themselves at the beginning of February 2021 in the midst of a strict lockdown throughout the UK...

Introduction This study examines the role of individual agency and parental co‐agency as resource factors enabling educational mobility (university enrolment and degree completion) among first‐generation students. Methods The study is based on Next Steps, a nationally representative cohort of UK students. Path models were run, linking different di...

This chapter introduces a socioecological developmental systems approach for the study of human resilience, conceptualizing the multiple contextual influences (ranging from the micro-to the macro context and including the ecosystem), and their interactions with individual functioning over time. It is argued that resilience is a multi-level, dynamic...

Social-emotional competences are critical for positive development and significantly predict educational and occupational attainment, health, and well-being. There is however a lack of consensus about the number of core competences, and how these are defined and operationalized. This divergence in approach challenges future research as well as the...

Adolescent agency has been identified as a central aspect in the study of social mobility and status attainment. There is however still a lack of understanding of (a) how different SES dimensions influence the expression of multiple dimensions of agency; (b) the interplay of SES and adolescent agency in shaping adult outcomes; and (c) variations in...

Objective: This study extends existing research on the role of infant temperament as a moderator of the association between the quality of parent-child relationships and children's self-control during the pre-school years. In particular, we focus on the potential moderating role of a dimension of early infant temperament known as behavioral inhibi...

Although the importance of parents on adolescents' development has long captured the attention of researchers, only a few studies addressed personal agency. The individual capacity to be an actor on their own life course constitutes a great challenge to adolescents living in Western societies characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability. The w...

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’...

This article reviews the evidence on young people in the UK making the transition from school to work in a changing socioeconomic climate. The review draws largely on evidence from national representative panels and follows the lives of different age cohorts. I show that there has been a trend toward increasingly uncertain and precarious employment...

Systematic differences in voter turnout limit the capacity of public institutions to address the needs of under-represented groups. One critical question relates to the role of health as a mechanism driving these inequalities. This study explores the associations of self-rated health (SRH) and limitations in everyday activities with voting over the...

Background Education is a strong predictor of voting in most Western countries. New studies, predominantly from the United States, question the role of health as a mechanism reinforcing social inequalities in voting over the life-course. In the United Kingdom, we previously found that heavy smoking, physical inactivity, poor self-reported health, a...

In this chapter we review the evidence from a three-country study assessing the impact of the 2008 Great Recession on young people making the step into independent adulthood, comparing experiences in the UK, in Germany, and the USA. Drawing on evidence from large scale, longitudinal studies the experiences of young people coming of age in different...

This article addresses the ongoing debate on the role of agency and structure in shaping the transition from school to work. Drawing on theories of life-course sociology and life-span psychology an integrated social-ecological developmental approach is presented, conceptualizing individual agency as a relational and intentional process that evolves...

People’s motivation to engage in studying and working is an important precursor of participation and attainment. However, little is known about how motivation and the lack of motivation develops normatively across adolescence and young adulthood. Furthermore, there is no comparison of motivation and amotivation development across sequential age-gra...

This paper reviews evidence on young people in Europe and the US making the transition from school-to-work before and after the 2008 Great Recession. Taking a macro-level perspective, similarities and differences in education and employment experiences across different European countries are described, considering the role of different institutiona...

This study adopts a socio-ecological approach to examine multiple factors and processes assumed to shape the intergenerational transmission of social disadvantage, including influences of social change, social causation and social selection. Moving beyond approaches focusing on cumulative risk indices, this study uses latent class analysis to exami...

There is controversy regarding trends over time in the association between social origins and educational outcomes in the UK. An explanation may lie in different methods of analysis. This article provides new evidence about trends in inequality between the 1980s and 2010s and informs the debate about the conceptualisation and operationalisation of...

Pathways into and out of conduct problems differ by circumstances experienced since infancy. There is a research gap in understanding how these developmental patterns vary according to the timing and persistence of risk and whether there are differences across ecological domains. This study examines variations in trajectories of conduct problems be...

This paper explores the role of parenting practices in promoting the well-being of children growing up in conditions of socio-economic deprivation and family instability. Using data collected for the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a multi-dimensional approach is adopted in conceptualising family adversity and children’s well-being. The effect of incom...

Previous research has demonstrated the link between school engagement and academic attainment, but there is less understanding of the relationship between school engagement and educational aspirations. Using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), this study examines the association between emotional engagement and educational as...

In this paper we examine the longer term outcomes of young people who experienced out of home care (OHC) as children, in Britain, Germany and Finland, countries characterised by different welfare regimes. While there is some evidence on immediate transitions after leaving care (up to age 21), there is less evidence on experiences around age 30, a p...

Gender-specific pathways of conduct problems (CP) from toddlerhood have received little attention. Using a nationally representative sample of UK children born in 2000-2001 (6458 boys and 6340 girls), the current study (a) identified subgroups of CP pathways separately for boys and girls from ages 3 to 11 and (b) examined early precursors (pregnanc...

In this article, we explore how Black Caribbean parents prepare their children for the challenges ahead–including anticipated discrimination–in order to boost their opportunities in education and work and eventually their social mobility. Drawing upon family case studies with Black Caribbean families in London, this article focuses on what we have...

Internal locus of control is associated with academic success and indicators of wellbeing in youth. There is however less understanding regarding the role of locus of control in shaping the transition from school to work beyond the more widely studied predictors of socioeconomic background and academic attainment. Guided by a socio-ecological model...

This study investigates the role of early career aspirations in predicting the later educational and occupational outcomes of adolescents designated as having special educational needs (SEN) in comparison to those without SEN. Drawing upon the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, the sample includes adolescents with and without SEN who at...

What Have We Learned? What have we learned about the changing nature of youth transitions and the effect of the Great Recession on them? In this final chapter we draw conclusions and seek further insights from the evidence presented. First we give a brief overview, taking the discussion back to the initial questions about the recession effects to w...

Did the 2008 economic recession speed up or slow down present trends toward a general prolongation of the transition to independent adulthood? This chapter examines trends in employment and family transitions before and after the Great Recession using evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and Understanding Society. Our analysis ta...

Introduction The lives of young people are shaped by the economic circumstances and social contexts in which they live. In 2008 the world banking collapse, brought on by an overheated housing market in the USA and the deluge of “subprime” mortgages, produced a tidal wave of economic consequences for employment and standards of living that have righ...

In this longitudinal study, we test whether varying degrees of indecision about future career choices at age 16 have long-term economic consequences in adulthood, taking into account potential gender differences. Findings from a British cohort born in 1970 indicate that young people who were completely undecided about job choices did experience a w...

In this longitudinal study, we test whether varying degrees of indecision about future career choices at age 16 have long-term economic consequences in adulthood, taking into account potential gender differences. Findings from a British cohort born in 1970 indicate that young people who were completely uindeecicided sive about their job choices did...

Economic conditions have dramatic influences on fertility. This paper evaluates the effect of the 2008 ‘Great Recession’ in the UK on first birth rate, which is the fertility behaviour most susceptible to external economic conditions. The key aim of the study was to assess the effect of the recession on fertility by individual-level characteristics...

Presentation of draft/work-in-progress paper. There is consistent evidence to demonstrate the detrimental and long-term effects on academic and occupational attainment of growing up in a socio-economically disadvantaged family, as well as on the health and wellbeing of the offspring generation. However, the experience of poverty does not occur in i...

This study examined the co-development of educational expectations and effort (conceptualized as indicators of individual agency) during secondary school and assessed their role as predictors of academic success, controlling for prior academic attainment and parental social background. Drawing on data collected for the Longitudinal Study of Young P...

This study examines the role of structural and agentic resources in shaping school-to-work transitions in England. We ask to what extent are young people able to steer the course of their lives despite the constraining forces of social structure, and how satisfied are they with their lives following the completion of compulsory schooling. Drawing o...

This study examines the role of structural and agentic resources in shaping school-to-work transitions in England. We ask to what extent are young people able to steer the course of their lives despite the constraining forces of social structure, and how satisfied are they with their lives following the completion of compulsory schooling. Drawing o...

Objective: Previous studies have shown that individual differences in self-control emerge early in childhood and predict a range of important outcomes throughout childhood and adulthood. There is, however, less knowledge about the social origins of self-control, including the mechanisms by which early socioeconomic adversity may lead to lower leve...

This special section brings together leading experts in psychology and sociology to examine the consequences of the Great Recession for young people's values, achievement orientation, and outlook to the future. Evidence from Europe and the United States suggests that the impact of the recession varies for distinct outcomes and by age, the latter po...

The major aim of the PATHWAYS Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme is to stimulate innovative, interdisciplinary, and comparative research of productive youth development. Participating institutions include the UCL Institute of Education in London, the Universities of Helsinki, Jena, Tübingen, Stockhom, University of California, Irvine and Michigan S...

Background: Previous evidence indicates that mental health problems are becoming more common for adolescents. Less is known about whether these trends have continued and there has been no study to date which has specifically focused on early adolescents over a sufficiently long period. This study examines changes in parent- and teacher-reported me...

This study identified the varied ways in which emotional disengagement from schoolwork typically developed between 14 and 16 years of age, in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. Using growth mixture modelling we found eight main trajectories of (dis)engagement, with four trajectories of either increasing or stable emotional disengage...