Wellbeing, Developmental Crisis and Residential Status in the Year After Graduating from Higher Education: A 12-Month Lo
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Wellbeing, Developmental Crisis and Residential Status in the Year After Graduating from Higher Education: A 12‑Month Longitudinal Study Oliver C. Robinson1 · Maria Cimporescu2 · Trevor Thompson1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Graduating from higher education is characterized by a complex set of changes, including the transition into employment as well as residential changes and identity shifts. We explored how wellbeing and depressive symptoms are associated with retrospective appraisals of developmental crisis in the year after leaving university, and the impact of living with parents following graduation. Data were collected from graduates based in the UK over the course of the 12 months following completing an undergraduate degree, via a 3-phase longitudinal design. One-third of the sample reported experiencing a developmental crisis within the year following university. Those who reported a crisis scored significantly lower on measures of environmental mastery across all time points and higher on measures of depression. Those living with parents scored significantly lower on measures of self-acceptance and autonomy and higher on measures of depression. In light of these findings, we conclude that interventions and targeted support to help students manage the psychological challenges of life after university should be developed and implemented. Keywords Graduates · Longitudinal · Depression · Wellbeing · Quarter-life crisis · Residential status · Psychology Graduating from higher education is a multi-faceted and complex life transition. Upon leaving university, graduates experience shifts across a variety of life domains including relationships, friendship networks, personal finances, work, residence, recreation and daily routine (Robinson 2019). There are major challenges to self-identity as individuals transition from their role as a student to the more autonomous role of a young professional (Crebert et al. 2004). Indeed, there are few transitions in adult life during which such significant life domain changes occur within a short space of time. This makes the post-university transition * Oliver C. Robinson [email protected] Maria Cimporescu [email protected] Trevor Thompson [email protected] 1
School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, UK
Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
2
arguably one of the most challenging turning points of adult life, yet it has been rarely studied in terms of its effects on identity, mental health and wellbeing. In this introduction, we briefly define a set of relevant concepts and theories— life transition, emerging adulthood, and quarter-life crisis—before reviewing the literature on the post-university transition. Transitions are qualitative changes in a person’s psychosocial life structure. In other words, they are changes in kind, rather than change in amount (Robinson 2013). In the case of the post-university transition, a key qualitative change is from being a student to a worker (or unemployed i
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