Lifecourse Priorities Among Appalachian Emerging Adults: Revisiting Wallace's Organization of Diversity
- 12 May 2009
- Vol. 37 (2), 225-242
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01040.x
Abstract
We examine how social demographics (gender, age, or race–ethnicity), census tract characteristics, and family environment during childhood relate to variability in the lifecourse priorities of 344 Cherokee and white youth during emerging adulthood (age 19–24). Analyses were performed using recursive partitioning and random forest methods to examine determinants of prioritizing education, family formation, economic establishment, self characteristics and close relationships, youth independence, conspicuous consumption, and community reliance. Overall, characteristics of census tracts were the most common and influential predictors of lifecourse priorities. Childhood family poverty, parental relationship problems, parental crime, and stressful life events were also important predictors. Race–ethnicity or cultural group (Cherokee vs. white), age, and gender were relatively unimportant. At this developmental stage and in this population, community characteristics and childhood family experiences may be better proxies for developmental settings (and resulting enculturated values and preferences) than social demographic variables (e.g., ethnicity or gender). [lifecourse, emerging adulthood, recursive partitioning, American Indian, Appalachia]Keywords
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- Combinations of biomarkers predictive of later life mortalityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2006
- Children and Youth in Neighborhood ContextsCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, 2003
- Neighborhood Effects on Family Formation: Concentrated Poverty and BeyondAmerican Sociological Review, 1999
- Families and Neighbors as Sources of Disadvantage in the Schooling Decisions of White and Black AdolescentsAmerican Journal of Education, 1994
- Do Neighborhoods Influence Child and Adolescent Development?American Journal of Sociology, 1993
- The Cultural Construction of Child Development: A Framework for the Socialization of AffectEthos, 1983
- Parental Goals, Ethnopsychology, and the Development of Emotional MeaningEthos, 1983
- Culture and Social Behavior: A Model for the Development of Social BehaviorEthos, 1980
- A general model for the study of developmental problems.Psychological Bulletin, 1965
- Social Structure and Fertility: An Analytic FrameworkEconomic Development and Cultural Change, 1956