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Emerging Adults’ Journeys Out of the Shutdown: Longitudinal Narrative Patterns in a College Career Defined by COVID-19

American Psychological Association
Developmental Psychology
Authors:
Jordan Ashton Booker at University of Missouri
Jordan Ashton Booker
Robyn Fivush at Emory University
Robyn Fivush
Andrea Follmer Greenhoot at University of Kansas
Andrea Follmer Greenhoot
Kate C McLean at Western Washington University
Kate C McLean
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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has defined the college career for this generation of learners, threatening mental health, identity development, and college functioning. We began tracking the impacts of this pandemic for 633 first-year college students from four U.S. universities (Mage = 18.8 years) in Spring 2020 and followed students to Spring 2023. Students provided narratives about the impacts of COVID-19 and reports of mental health concerns, identity development, well-being. Students reported concerns for mental health, identity, and well-being during the first year of COVID-19 impacts. The return to in-person activities predicted broad increases in narrative growth and concomitant decreases in COVID-19 stressors, increases in identity exploration and commitment, and increases in psychological and academic well-being. Changes in COVID-19 stressors and narrative growth served as mediators between the return to in-person activities around campus and student outcomes. Findings expand insights of development and mental health across much of this generation-defining event.
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Emerging Adults’Journeys Out of the Shutdown: Longitudinal Narrative
Patterns in a College Career Defined by COVID-19
Jordan A. Booker
1
, Robyn Fivush
2
, Andrea Follmer Greenhoot
3
, Kate C. McLean
4
,
Cecilia Wainryb
5
, and Monisha Pasupathi
5
1
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
2
Department of Psychology, Emory University
3
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas
4
Department of Psychology, Western Washington University
5
Department of Psychology, Honors College, University of Utah
The COVID-19 pandemic has defined the college career for this generation of learners, threatening mental
health, identity development, and college functioning. We began tracking the impacts of this pandemic for
633 first-year college students from four U.S. universities (M
age
=18.8 years) in Spring 2020 and followed
students to Spring 2023. Students provided narratives about the impacts of COVID-19 and reports of mental
health concerns, identity development, well-being. Students reported concerns for mental health, identity,
and well-being during the first year of COVID-19 impacts. The return to in-person activities predicted
broad increases in narrative growth and concomitant decreases in COVID-19 stressors, increases in
identity exploration and commitment, and increases in psychological and academic well-being. Changes in
COVID-19 stressors and narrative growth served as mediators between the return to in-person activities
around campus and student outcomes. Findings expand insights of development and mental health across
much of this generation-defining event.
Public Significance Statement
We tested changes in college students’mental health, identity development, and functioning across
a 4-year span of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that context shifts from remote learning back to
in-person college activities predicted broad improvements in student health and development. Over
time, students also endorsed simultaneous decreases in COVID-19 stressors and increases in
autobiographical reasoning that helped to explain improvements in mental health, identity development,
and college functioning.
Keywords: narrative growth, COVID-19, identity development, mental health, emerging adulthood
Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted life
across the United States, albeit in differing ways, with implications
for mental, physical, and financial health (e.g., Charles et al., 2021;
Pasupathi et al., 2022). Despite a consensus that the pandemic
continues to have profound impacts, we still know little about the
long-term trajectories on well-being and identity. These impacts
may be especially acute in the generation of students who spent their
college years against the backdrop of COVID-19. Developmentally,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First August 29, 2024.
Koraly Pérez-Edgar served as action editor.
Jordan A. Booker https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8787-8585
Robyn Fivush https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3526-1588
Andrea Follmer Greenhoot https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8517-6149
Kate C. McLean https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3973-1786
Cecilia Wainryb https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-4330
Monisha Pasupathi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9105-4554
This project was supported by seed funding from the Vice President for
Research and the 3i Initiative at the University of Utah awarded to Monisha
Pasupathi, and internal grants from Washington Sea Grant, University of
Washington (Grant No. MF1883) awarded to Kate C. McLean. The authors
have no conflicts of interest regarding this project.
Data from this project are available through the Open Science Framework:
https://osf.io/q9njp.
Jordan A. Booker played a lead role in formal analysis and writing–
original draft, a supporting role in funding acquisition, and an equal role in
conceptualization, data curation, investigation, methodology, and writing–
review and editing. Robyn Fivush played a lead role in funding acquisition
and an equal role in conceptualization, data curation, investigation,
methodology, and writing–review and editing. Andrea Follmer Greenhoot
played a supporting role in formal analysis and funding acquisition and an
equal role in conceptualization, investigation, methodology, and writing–
review and editing. Kate C. McLean played a lead role in funding acquisition
and supervision, a supporting role in data curation, and an equal role in
conceptualization, investigation, methodology, and writing–review and
editing. Cecilia Wainryb played a lead role in investigation and an equal role
in methodology and writing–review and editing. Monisha Pasupathi played a
lead role in funding acquisition and an equal role in conceptualization,
investigation, methodology, and writing–review and editing.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jordan
A. Booker, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri,
McAlester Hall, Room 213, Columbia, MO 65211, United States. Email:
bookerja@missouri.edu
Developmental Psychology
© 2024 American Psychological Association 2024, Vol. 60, No. 10, 1870–1884
ISSN: 0012-1649 https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001767
1870
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