The 15-to 18-year-old study

In their assessment of the results of their Youth In Transition study, which investigated change and stability in the lives of young men, Bachman, O’Malley and Johnston (1978) reported how they had expected change to characterize the lives of their adolescents making the transition to adulthood. The results of their longitudinal study, however, placed more emphasis on stability than on change in the lives of youth. The researchers reported that their own pattern of expectations as social scientists had changed - they had expected to find change and had found stability; it was thus they as social scientists who had changed; their respondents, with respect to attitudes, aspirations, self-concepts and behaviours, had basically remained stable.