Moving Up, Feeling Down: Socioemotional Health during the Transition into College

• In Event: 153 - Section on Children and Youth Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Youth and Employment

Abstract

Moving from high school to college is a critical juncture in socioemotional health, and how young people fare likely depends on their academic settings and experiences. To examine variation in trajectories of depressive symptomatology across the transition from high school into college, this study applied growth mixture modeling to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which revealed multiple patterns of symptomatology over time that ranged from healthy to unhealthy. Adolescents appeared to have the healthiest trajectories when they experienced consistently competitive academic settings in high school and college. Overall, transitioning into college was a period of socioemotional vulnerability for some and well-being for others, but challenging curricula and contexts across this transition could differentiate between the two.

Author

• Julie Skalamera Olson, University of Texas at Austin