Adolescents' Future Orientation And Emotional Adjustment

Future orientation is defined as how adolescents anticipate and construct their personal future (Nurmi, 1991; Seginer, 1992; Trommsdorff, 1983). However, even though future events motivate everyday behavior over a life-time, thinking and planning for the future are particularly important for adolescents, because adolescence is a transition period from childhood to adulthood. Based on Nurmi's cognitive-motivational framework, future orientation is a multidimensional and multistage phenomenon that can be described in terms of motivation, planning, and evaluation (1991). Previous research indicates adolescents'future orientation, which plays an important role at this stage of life, is particularly important for many aspects of adolescent's current and later development and adaptations such as subject well-being (McCabe & Barnett, 2000a; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1997; Shobe & Page-Adams, 2001), reducing individual's depression (Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1996). Emotional adjustment is an important facet of adolescents'psycho-social adaptation and well-being. In order to understand the significance of future orientation to individuals, this study explored the impacts of adolescents'future orientation on emotional adjustment. Although a few studies have explored the relationship between future orientation and emotional adjustment (Nurmi & Salmela-Aro, 2002; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1996, 1997), these studies focused on late adolescents,and no more than two processes. This study explored how the three processes of future orientation influenced early and middle adolescents'emotional adjustment.The vast majority of the research on future orientation mainly focused on one single process whatever they concerned. For a specific person, however, the three processes of future orientation interact with each other. It is unenough to understand future orientation thoroughly. Given the limitations, Cluster Analysis was employed to integrate the three processes of future orientation in terms of motivation (goals and concerns), planning (exploration and commitment) and evaluation (attitudes) in three life domains (i.e. future education, occupation and marriage/family) to understand the different types of future orientation and their characters. Besides, on the basis of these analyses, this study also explored the types of adolescents'future orientation and its relationship with emotional adjustment varied as a function of the specific domain。1839 Chinese adolescents from five junior high schools and five senior high schools in Jinan City and Yantai City, Shandong Province were employed to complete the questionnaires. Three self-report questionnaires were administered, including a modified version of Future Orientation Questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The indicators of future orientation included adolescents'goals and concerns related to three life domains, i.e. future education, occupation and marriage/family, and the exploration, commitment and attitudes concerning individual development in these three life domains. The indicators of emotional adjustment included depression and trait anxiety. The main findings were as follows:(1) The types of future orientation varied as a function of the three life domains. The participants were classified into five, four and two different categories according to their future orientation in the domain of future education, occupation and marriage/family respectively.(2) Variable-centered analyses indicated that the effects of the three processes of future orientation on emotional adjustment were different. Evaluation significantly predicted the variance of adolescents'emotional adjustment, followed by planning,while motivation could not predicte the variance of adolescents'emotional adjustment.(3) The frequency of goals and concerns moderated the relationship between urban-rural, grade and emotional adjustment. More concerns about future education or more goals related to occupation could actually protect adolescents who living in rural areas from high depression. And less goals related to education could intensify junior middle school students'depression and trait anxiety.(4) The results based on person-centered analyses were different from the results from but supported the variable-centered analyses. Individuals with mid motivation-low planning-low optimism in education or the ones with low motivation-low planning-low optimism in occupation suffered the most from depression and trait anxiety. In marriage/family domain, individuals with low score on future orientation scored higher on trait anxiety than the other type.(5) Domain specific of future orientation was discovered in term of the number of categaries, and the relationship between different processes and emotional adjustment.