Adolescent Work Quality

Abstract

Adolescent employment is commonly valued in the United States for its ability to promote youths’ positive psychosocial development. Empirical research, however, suggests the extent to which youth reap such benefits from work is largely a function of work’s quality. This study investigated adolescent work quality by examining the extent to which characteristics associated with positive or negative psychosocial outcomes are found in the jobs adolescents hold today. Our findings from surveys and interviews with working youth show that contemporary adolescent jobs provide at least moderate levels of the characteristics that promote positive psychosocial outcomes and some of those that promote negative outcomes. Adolescent jobs have the greatest capacity to encourage positive psychosocial development by providing opportunities for youth to be helpful and, to a lesser extent, to be around supportive others and to learn new things. Improvements in other areas of work quality are needed to maximize work’s potential to contribute positively to adolescent psychosocial development.

Keywords

adolescent work job quality employment psychosocial development

Introduction

While employment rates among teenagers in the United States have been dropping over the last decade, taking one’s first real job remains a familiar rite of passage for millions of teenagers and is seen as a stepping stone toward independence and adulthood (Herman & United States Department of Labor, 2000; Kruse & Mahoney, 2000; Mortimer, 2005; Mortimer & Johnson, 1997; Phillips & Sandstrom, 1990; Staff, Messersmith, & Schulenberg, 2009; Staff & Schulenberg, 2010; United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000, 2009).[In the sentence beginning “While employment rates among teenagers in the United States . . . ” Please confirm if the highlighted citation “United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000” is “United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000a” or “United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000b.”] Regarding popular beliefs about the benefits of work, the noted researchers Greenberger & Steinberg (1986) wrote, “the two most common themes in popular thinking about youth work are the belief that work ‘builds character’ and teaches youngsters what ‘real life’ is about” (p. 36). This statement, made some 25 years ago, remains true today as parents and policymakers alike continue to express these and similar sentiments, including the positive effects of work on building self-confidence, independence, respect for others, and trustworthiness among youth (Brown, 2001; National Institute of Medicine, 1998; National Youth Employment Coalition, 1994; Runyan, Schulman, Dal Santo, Bowling, & Agans, 2009; Sum, Khatiwada, & Palma, 2010; United States Department of Labor. Office of Public Affairs, 2010). Research on youth employment, however, suggests that while many believe it to be true, not all work leads to such positive psychosocial outcomes.

Studies show that the extent to which youth benefit developmentally from work may have more to do with the particular qualities of the work than simply the act of working itself (Barling, Rogers, & Kelloway, 1995; Cunnien, MartinRogers, & Mortimer, 2009; Finch, Shanahan, Mortimer, & Ryu, 1991; Flouri & Buchanan, 2002; Mortimer, Harley, & Staff, 2002; Shanahan, Finch, Mortimer, & Ryu, 1991; Vazsonyi, 2008). For example, in one study of recent high school graduates (O’Brien & Feather, 1990), unemployed teenagers were compared with teenagers employed in “poor quality” jobs, characterized as providing little opportunity to use one’s abilities, develop skill, and express autonomy. Both groups scored equally low on several measures of psychosocial well-being including affect, locus of control, and competence.

The impact of work quality is further demonstrated by studies that show the negative behavioral effects associated with working long hours such as substance use, smoking, and binge drinking (Monahan, Lee, & Steinberg, 2011; Paschall, Flewelling, & Russell, 2004; Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993; Staff & Uggen, 2003; Weller, Kelder, Cooper, Basen-Engquist, & Tortolero, 2003) can be moderated when these hours are spent working in high-quality jobs (Bachman & Schulenberg, 1993; Barling et al., 1995).

As researchers in public health, public policy, and child labor, we believe that answering the question of key influences on the psychosocial development of youth will require research on the workplace in addition to research on the family and peer group as critical influences in the lives of youth. Because U.S. teenagers spend about one quarter of their waking free time at work (National Institute of Medicine, 1998), we believe it is important that we take as much time and care in understanding this developmental context as we do in understanding others.

In this article, we lay out both the cultural context surrounding work for adolescents and the empirical evidence regarding the association between work quality and adolescent psychosocial outcomes. The goal of our study is to provide some evidence to inform a set of societal beliefs about the value of teen work that appear deeply held and frequently asserted. By locating the research and discussion within a framework that postulates that all teen work activities in general provide a positive experience for teens, we sought to examine the validity of these claims by investigating the contemporary quality of teen work. We do so by setting out in our Background section a discussion of the cultural context in which the value of work is expressed in general, and for teens in particular.

We then present the findings of our mixed methods study in which we used interview and survey data to capture the quality of jobs among a sample of high school students in the Northeast United States to answer the question, “to what extent do the jobs held by today’s adolescents possess the qualities associated with either positive or negative psychosocial development.” In light of our findings, we discuss the potential for contemporary job quality to fulfill work’s promise to benefit adolescents in their psychosocial development.

Background

The Value of Adolescent Work

Surveys have shown parents believe that, in addition to teaching valuable job skills and keeping kids out of trouble, work teaches youth to be trustworthy and to put work commitments before one’s own desires, and fosters independence and dependability brought out by work’s requirements to be punctual (Phillips & Sandstrom, 1990; Runyan et al., 2009; Zimmer-Gembeck & Mortimer, 2006). Parents also cite learning the value of money and gaining financial independence as key benefits of work among teenagers (Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986; Phillips & Sandstrom, 1990). Policymakers and experts have long expressed similar views arguing that young people should be encouraged to work because it instills positive work attitudes and habits and promotes responsible behavior (National Manpower Institute, 1978), provides a context in which creative expression, a sense of purpose, self-respect, and respect for others are fostered (National Commission on Youth, 1980) and allows youth to gain skills and experience they need to make a healthy transition into adulthood.

In more recent times, views from policymakers and experts have not changed much. In its 1998 report, “Protecting Youth at Work,” the National Institute of Medicine made the case for early teen work, writing that adolescents “. . . may learn, for example, how to relate to people from diverse backgrounds, including customers, clients, coworkers, and supervisors; to follow employers’ directions and rules; to keep track of their schedules; and to get to work on time” (National Institute of Medicine, 1998, p. 122). In 2010, Hilda Solis the US Secretary of Labor urged Congress to extend funds for “Summer Youth Employment” programs, arguing that work offers young people an opportunity to develop the skills they need to be successful in their future careers (United States Department of Labor. Office of Public Affairs, 2010).

From this overview we see that parents and policymakers alike have very specific beliefs and expectations about the benefits of work for teenagers, especially as it relates to what researchers call psychosocial development and what parents might term “character building.” In considering these views, one might ask the following questions: “Are the real world experiences of teens today meeting our expectations? Does work really promote positive work values, independence, reliability, and self-esteem?” The answer, it turns out, is “it depends.” Studies that have examined these very questions conclude that the extent to which youth benefit psychologically and socially from work, largely depends on the quality of the work in which they are engaged. Moreover, researchers have been able to isolate particular qualities of work that are associated with specific outcomes related to psychosocial well-being.

The Role of Work Quality

Prior to the late 1980s, job quality was largely ignored in studies of youth employment and adolescent development. This was perhaps due to the widely held misconception that all teen jobs were basically the same (e.g., low pay, low skill, routinized). That youth may have different work experiences and thus, be differentially affected by those experiences, was given little consideration. The notion that the quality of work can impact a worker’s well-being has been demonstrated in numerous studies of adult workers (Brousseau & Prince, 1981; Hackman & Oldman, 1980; Johansson & Aronson, 1991; Karasek, 1979; Mortimer & Lorence, 1979). However, until the ground breaking work of scholars such as Greenberger, Steinberg, and Mortimer beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers had not considered that this might also be true for adolescent workers. Their work, and that of a number of researchers who followed in their footsteps, has given us an appreciation of the importance of varying work quality and its effects on adolescent development.

The body of research that exists today has provided substantial evidence on the importance of work quality in adolescent development but much less evidence on whether most jobs available to youth possess the key qualities. As for the former, research has demonstrated both that work quality matters and that particular work characteristics influence adolescent development including the formation of work-related attitudes and beliefs and a range of measures of psychosocial well-being. For example, this work has shown that youth experience increased feelings of competence when their jobs come with opportunities to be helpful or act autonomously (Call Thiede, Mortimer, & Shanahan, 1995), and decreased work cynicism when their jobs present them with opportunities to learn new things (Stone & Josiam, 2000). Conversely, youth experience depression (Mortimer et al., 2002; Stone & Josiam, 2000), and work cynicism (Stern, Stone, Hopkins, & McMillion, 1990) when they experience work stress. Table 1 displays a comprehensive overview of the long literature on the relationship between particular work characteristics and a variety of psychosocial outcomes in working adolescents. This body of research on work quality and its effects on adolescents is indeed rich and has expanded the debate from whether or not work is good for teens to the more complex question: what work is good for teens. It suggests that we should not concern ourselves solely with the number of hours adolescents work (as has been done by many in the past), but must consider more strongly the work environments in which they spend those hours.

Table 1.

Work Characteristics and the Psychosocial Developmental Outcomes Associated With Each.

Work characteristics	Measures of psychosocial well-being	Measures of Work values and attitudes
Autonomy	• Increased competence (males only; Call Thiede et al., 1995)
	• Increased self-esteem (Barling et al., 1995)
	• Increased depression (males only; Shanahan et al., 1991)
Helping opportunities	• Increased competence (females only; Call Thiede et al., 1995)	• Increased value on intrinsic rewards of work (i.e., making a contribution to society; Mortimer et al., 1996)
Learning opportunities	• Increased internality (i.e., internal locus of control; Finch et al., 1991)	• Increased work ethic and positive work attitudes (Stone & Josiam, 2000)
		• Decreased work cynicism (Stone & Josiam, 2000)
Relevance of things learned	• Increased internality and self-esteem (Mortimer, Finch, Shanahan, & Ryu, 1992)
	• Decreased depression (males only; Shanahan et al., 1991)
	• Decreased alcohol use (males only; Mortimer et al., 1992)
Skill use	• Increased internality and competence (O’Brien & Feather, 1990)	• Increased desire to use skills (O’Brien & Feather, 1990)
	• Increased hope for the future (Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)	• Increased commitment to autonomy and industriousness (O’Brien & Feather, 1990)
	• Increased life satisfaction (O’Brien & Feather, 1990; Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)	• Increased motivation to do good work (Stern et al., 1990)
	• Decreased depression (O’Brien & Feather, 1990)	• Decreased work cynicism (Stern et al., 1990)
	• Decreased cigarette and marijuana use (Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)
	• Decreased alcohol use and binge drinking (females only; Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)
	• Increased career maturity (Flouri & Buchanan, 2002)
	• Increased alcohol use and binge drinking (males only; Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)
Future work connection	• Increased life satisfaction (Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)	• Increased capacity for taking on responsibility (Stern & Briggs, 2001)
	• Increased sense of well-being (males only; Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993)	• Development of time-management skills (Stern & Briggs, 2001)
	• Increased internality (males only; Finch et al., 1991)	• Improved ability to work with others (Stern & Briggs, 2001)
Social support	• Increased competence (females only; Call Thiede et al., 1995)	• Decreased work cynicism (Loughlin & Barling, 1998; Stone & Josiam, 2000)
	• Increased self-efficacy (Cunnien, 2009)	• Increased job skill acquisition (Vazsonyi, 2008)
Work stress	• Increased self-derogation (males only; Mortimer et al., 1992)	• Increased work cynicism (Stern et al., 1990)
	• Increased depression (Mortimer et al., 2002; Mortimer & Staff, 2004); in boys only (Mortimer et al., 1992; Shanahan et al., 1991)	• Increased value on extrinsic rewards of work (i.e., money and status; Mortimer et al., 1996)
	• Decreased self-esteem and self-efficacy (Mortimer & Staff, 2004)
	• Decreased internality (Mortimer et al., 1992)
Work-school conflict	• Increased self-derogation (females only; Mortimer et al., 1992)	• Increased work cynicism (Stern et al., 1990; Stone & Josiam, 2000)
	• Increased depression (Mortimer et al., 2002; Shanahan et al., 1991); in females only (Mortimer et al., 1992)	• Decreased motivation to do good work (Stern et al., 1990).
	• Decreased internality (females only; Mortimer et al., 1992); in males only (Finch et al., 1991)	• Decreased positive work attitudes (Stone & Josiam, 2000)
	• Decreased sense of well-being (females only; Mortimer et al., 1992)
	• Decreased self-esteem (Barling et al., 1995); in females only (Mortimer et al., 1992)

When looking at the extent to which work qualities known to affect psychosocial development exist in the jobs held by teens we find mixed results. In the only observational study we identified, from the early 1980s, Greenberger and Steinberg (1986) found that adolescent jobs lacked positive qualities such as skill use, autonomy, learning opportunities, helping opportunities, and adult social support. By contrast, research that relied on surveys of working youth, tended to paint a more positive picture with youth describing their work as providing opportunities to be autonomous, help others, use skills, learn new things, and develop positive interpersonal relationships (Mortimer, Finch, & Dennehy, 1994; Staff & Uggen, 2003; Stern & Briggs, 2001; Stone & Josiam, 2000). Both the observational and the youth survey studies provided key insights into the extent to which particular work qualities existed within the jobs held by adolescents, however, with the exception one recent study (Staff & Schulenberg, 2010) these are based on data that were collected almost two decades ago or more.

Studies based on older evidence have limited relevance today due to rapid, recent changes in the nature of work. A confluence of economic, political, and social trends—including growing efficiency and flexibility demands, advances in technology, and a decline in union power—has affected the quality of U.S. jobs, particularly those in the retail and service sectors in which the majority of youth have long tended to work (Carre & Tilly, 2008; Ehrenreich, 2001; Green, 2007; Greenhouse, 2008; Kalleberg, 2008; Kalleberg, Reskin, & Hudson, 2000; National Institute of Medicine, 1998; United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). These trends have resulted in increased work pace, decreased pay, increased physical and psychological demands, and lower control and autonomy for workers; together reshaping the quality of jobs in general and retail and service jobs in particular (Carre & Tilly, 2008; Ehrenreich, 2001; Green, 2007; Greenhouse, 2008; Kalleberg, 2008; Kalleberg et al., 2000).

To shed light on the quality of adolescent work today, we embarked on the present study using a mixed-methods approach employing surveys and in-depth interviews. Specifically, we investigated the extent to which youth view their jobs as possessing select work characteristics associated with psychosocial developmental outcomes as demonstrated in the literature (see Table 1). Our overall goal was to provide an updated assessment of adolescent work quality, by which work’s potential to positively influence the psychosocial development of youth can be assessed. While we wanted to quantify the prevalence of particular work characteristics, it was also important to us that we heard from young workers themselves to get their thoughts on work quality. Thus, this study provides qualitative data (largely missing in the current literature) intended to provide insight into contemporary work quality for adolescents.

Method

Sample and Data Collection

This study was designed to characterize the quality of adolescents’ jobs using both surveys of and interviews with a sample of working youth. In order to adequately study work quality, we set out to attain a purposive sample that would represent a range of jobs with potentially differing work qualities. Therefore, we selected high schools in different cities with different student bodies, based on geographic and sociodemographic characteristics—all of which impact the types of jobs that are available to youth and the ones into which they select (Ahituv, Tienda, & Holtz, 1997; Keithly & Deseran, 1995; Rothstein, 2001; United States General Accounting Office, 1991; Usalcas, 2005). The household and school-level data described below come from the United States Census Bureau (2000) and the Massachusetts Department of Education School Profile Data (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2004).

The data were collected in 2004 from students enrolled in grades 9 to 12 in three Massachusetts high schools. School A was large (3,802 students) and located in an urban city with a median household income of US$39,111. Fifty-four percent of its student body received free or reduced priced lunch and 42% of students planned to attend a 4-year college. School B was mid-sized (1,599) and located in a suburban city where the median household income was US$65,460. Seven percent of the student body received free or reduced priced lunch and 100% of its students planned to attend a 4-year college. School C was a small (593) and in a suburban city with a median household income of US$76,784. Four percent of its student body received free or reduced priced lunch and 84% of its students planned to attend a 4-year college.

Based on student enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics (United States Department of Education, 2004), the samples drawn from each of the three high schools were representative of the student body with respect to race (i.e., samples from each school had similar proportions of each racial category as were present in the entire school). School B was representative in terms of socioeconomic status (SES), however, Schools A and C overrepresented students from higher income families. This sample yielded a mix of students with a variety of jobs, which allowed us to explore work quality across a range of jobs held by teenagers.

Survey procedures

In schools A and B, homeroom teachers in grades 9 to 12 explained the study to their students and distributed surveys to those who met the eligibility criteria (formally employed at the time of the survey) and volunteered to participate. Participants were asked to return the completed surveys to their homeroom teachers within 1 week. In school A, 160 completed surveys were returned and in school B, 37 were returned. In school C, the principal sent a packet to the home of every enrolled student in grades 9 to 12 containing a letter which explained the survey and eligibility criteria, the survey instrument, and instructions to return completed surveys to the principal’s office approximately 1 week later. Forty-five completed surveys were returned.

Interview procedures

An “Interview Request Form,” attached to each high school survey, asked students that were interested in being interviewed to provide their contact information on the form and return it with their survey. Using this method we recruited 12 students to be interviewed. Four additional subjects were identified through referrals by interviewees and a local youth-serving community center. All four additional recruits were attending school A at the time of the interview. A total of 16 working teenagers, between the ages of 16 and 19 were interviewed. All interviews were conducted face to face. The group was racially and economically diverse (coming from all three schools) and represented a wide range of jobs held during high school.

Our goal in using qualitative methods was to gain deeper insight into how young workers understood the quality of their jobs. Thus, a phenomenological approach was used to capture the “lived experiences” of working youth (Crotty, 1998; Jasper, 1994; Wimpenny & Gass, 2000). In-person interviews were conducted to elicit youths’ subjective experiences and interpretations of their work quality. To aid in this process, we used quantitative findings generated via analysis of the survey data to produce a semistructured interview guide. We asked all interviewees about each work quality construct. Below are several examples of the questions we asked.

Regarding learning opportunities we asked: “Do you think you’ve learned new things by working in this job?” If they answered “Yes,” we asked, “Can you give me some examples?” If they answered “No,” we asked “Why do you think you haven’t learned new things?” For autonomy, we asked: “In terms of decision making, would you say you get to make a lot of decisions at work? “If “Yes,” we asked “Can you give me examples?” If “No,” we asked, “Who makes most of the decisions then?” In terms of skills, we asked “Do you think it takes a lot of skill to do your job?” If “Yes,” we followed with “Can you give me some examples of the skills needed to do your job?” Similar types of questions were asked for all of the remaining work quality constructs examined in this study. These examples are provided to show the general nature of the questions asked in the interviews, which were used to illuminate the findings from the survey and not necessarily to provide generalizable data. The opening questions above were asked of all subjects, however, given the semistructured nature of the interviews, additional and varying follow up questions may have been asked in certain cases.

This research was approved by the University of Massachusetts Lowell Institutional Review Board’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research.

Study Variables

Work characteristics

The questionnaire presented respondents with a series of statements about the characteristics of their jobs and asked them to indicate their agreement on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). For example, respondents were asked to indicate how much they agree with the statement, “My job allows me to make a lot of decisions on my own.” Using these responses, we created seven positive and two negative work characteristic constructs based on those identified in the literature as being associated with one or more psychosocial outcomes.

The positive constructs included autonomy, helping opportunities, learning opportunities, skill use, future work connection, supervisor support and coworker support. Because social support was measured in some prior studies as “supervisor support” and in others as “positive interpersonal relationships” that included both coworker and supervisor support, we decided to look at each separately. The negative work characteristic constructs included: work stress and work–school conflict. For each construct, we created a score by summing the individual survey items used to create the construct and standardized the scores to put them on a scale of 0 to 9.

With the exception of the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ), the measurement of each construct was derived from prior studies of adolescent work quality as cited below. The JCQ was developed for use with adult workers (Karasek et al., 1998) but has also been shown to be reliable in surveys of high school students (Fischer et al., 2005). All constructs and their measures are shown in Tables 3 and 4. Cronbach αs are also shown in these tables, all of which either exceed or are slightly less than 0.7 (0.7 or above indicate high reliability (Nunnally, 1978).

Autonomy was measured using a total of four survey items: three that captured opportunities for self-direction at work were taken from the JCQ (Karasek, Pieper, & Schwartz, 1997), and the fourth item asked about working without close supervision (Call Thiede et al., 1995). Helping opportunities was measured with one item on the extent to which youth felt that their jobs provided opportunities to be helpful to others (Call Thiede, 1996; Lodahl & Kejnar, 1965; Mortimer, Pimentel, Ryu, Nash, & Lee, 1996). Learning opportunities was measured using a total of three items: two were from the JCQ and asked about opportunities to learn new things and develop one’s own abilities, and the third item captured respondents’ views of how useful the things s/he is learning will be to them in the future (Finch et al., 1991; Shanahan et al., 1991).

Skill use was measured using a total of five items: four were from the JCQ capturing creativity, repetitiveness of tasks, variety of tasks, and skill requirements; and an additional item on opportunities to use one’s own skills in the job (Stern et al., 1990; Stone & Josiam, 2000). We measured future work connection using a total of four items: three captured the extent to which respondents’ current and anticipated future work is connected (Schulenberg & Bachman, 1993), and one item asked whether their job offered opportunities for advancement (Finch et al., 1991). Supervisor support and coworker support were each measured using five items from the JCQ that captured the level of social support and conflict between respondents and their supervisors and coworkers.

Work stress was measured using five items from the JCQ: one asked about role conflict and four captured the physical and time demands of the job. Finally, work–school conflict was measured using three items: two that captured work interference with schooling, and one that asked whether respondents felt being a student and a worker at the same time was difficult (Finch et al., 1991).

Demographics

Age, gender and race were collected from survey respondents. We categorized age into three groups—14-15, 16-17, and ≥18—based on the age distinctions made by the federal child labor laws that dictate the parameters of employment for youth (United States Department of Labor, 2005). We collected self-reported race with the question, “What race do you consider yourself to be?” Response options were, White, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic or “other.” As a measure of SES, we asked respondents whether they received free or reduced price school lunch. While this has long been recognized as a limited proxy for SES (Entwisle & Astone, 1994; Hauser, 1994), we used it because this is the SES indicator reported in the school-level data by which we determined the representativeness of our sample along this demographic characteristic.

We also collected data on the industry in which respondents worked by asking, “Which of the following BEST describes the type of company you work for?” and providing a list of eight options including “other.” Responses were coded into industry categories using the Standard Industrial Classification system (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000b).

Analysis

Survey data

Descriptive statistics were first used to analyze responses to each survey item. Mean scores for work characteristic constructs and differences in these means by age group and gender were examined. Differences by these two demographic characteristics were analyzed because it is widely known that the types of work in which youth engage vary by age and gender (Herman & United States Department of Labor, 2000; National Institute of Medicine, 1998), thus we wanted to see whether youth job quality assessments also varied by these characteristics. Two tailed t-tests with equal variance were used to test for significant differences in mean scores between genders and 1-way ANOVA was used to analyze differences in mean scores across the three age groups. Statistical significance was set at an α of 0.05.

Interviews

Because we had a relatively small number of interviews, we did not employ qualitative analysis software and instead manually analyzed the transcribed interview data. These data were examined for common themes as well as for particular details that enriched and elaborated upon the survey findings.

Results

Sample Characteristics

The combined sample of 242 participants consists mostly of students 16 years of age or older (90%), and slightly more males (54%) than females (49%). The racial mix includes 62% Whites (non-Hispanic), 22% Asians, 10% Hispanics, and 6% blacks/African Americans (non-Hispanic). Approximately 24% received free or reduced price school lunch. Over 60% of respondents were employed in the retail industry and 25% worked in the service industry. Within these industries, teens held a range of job types. Nineteen percent worked in food service jobs (e.g., waiter/hostess), 9% worked as sales clerks, 9% were cashiers, 13% were manual laborers (e.g., construction laborer, stocker), 10% worked as clerical workers (e.g., receptionist, secretary), and 26% worked in some “other” job (e.g., newspaper delivery, camp counselor, daycare).

According to employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the sample is representative of the working population of U.S. teenagers, both currently and at the time of data collection, with respect to industry, age, and gender. With respect to race/ethnicity, our sample overrepresents Asians and to a lesser degree underrepresents Blacks and Hispanics (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2004, 2009).

Positive Characteristics of Work

Figure 1 displays the mean scores for the positive work characteristic constructs and the range in which they lie (low = 0-3, moderate = 3.1-6, high = 6.1-9). All of the mean scores (which were between 3.1 and 7.2) fell in either the moderate or high range. At 7.2, helping opportunities had the highest score of all constructs. No positive characteristics scored in the low range, although future-work connection was on the cusp at 3.1. When we looked at differences in scores by age and gender, few statistically significant differences were found. Females had higher helping opportunities (t = 2.74, p = .006) and supervisor support (t = 2.89, p = .004) scores compared to males and youth in the two older age groups had higher scores on learning opportunities (F = 3.08, p = .048) and skill use (F = 4.78, p = .009) compared to those in the youngest age group. Below we look at each positive construct individually and consider the survey results (Table 2) and interview findings together.

Figure 1.

Range of mean scores of work characteristics associated with psychosocial outcomes (2004).

Table 2.

Percent of Working Adolescents Endorsing Characteristics of Their Jobs Associated With Positive Psychosocial Developmental Outcomes (n = 238; 2004).

Work characteristics and measures (Cronbach’s α)	“Agree” or “Strongly agree” (“Strongly agree” only)
Autonomy (0.65)
“My job allows me to make a lot of decisions on my own.”	55 (14)
“I have a lot of say about what happens on my job.”	48 (8)
“In my job, I am free from close supervision.”	49 (13)
“On my job, I have very little freedom to decide how to do my work.”	37 (5)
Helping opportunities
“My job allows me the opportunity to be helpful to others.”	94 (50)
Learning opportunities (0.56)
“My job requires that I learn new things.”	88 (29)
“I have an opportunity to develop my own special abilities.”	66 (19)
“The things I am learning in my job will be useful to me later in life.”	68 (19)
Skill use (0.65)
“My job requires a high level of skill.”	48 (13)
“My job requires being creative.”	42 (12)
“I get to do a variety of different things on my job.”	83 (25)
“My job requires me to use my own abilities and talents.”	61 (15)
“My job involves a lot of repetitive work.”	90 (42)
Future work connection (0.76)
“My job is one that I could be happy doing for most of my life.”	21 (4)
“My job is one that I expect to do for most of my life.”	9 (2)
“My job offers opportunity for advancement.”	63 (16)
“My job is a good stepping-stone toward the type of long-term work I want to do in the future.”	35 (9)
Supervisor support (0.77)
“My supervisor is concerned about the welfare of those under him/her.”	77 (18)
“My supervisor pays attention to what I am saying.”	88 (22)
“My supervisor is helpful in getting the job done.”	80 (27)
“My supervisor Is successful in getting people to work together.”	82 (20)
“I am exposed to hostility or conflict from supervisor.”	18 (3)
Coworker support (0.70)
“The people I work with take a personal interest in me.”	76 (12)
“The people I work with encourage each other to work together.”	79 (22)
“The people I work with are helpful in getting the job done.”	89 (29)
“The people I work with are friendly.”	96 (41)
“I am exposed to hostility or conflict from the people I work with.”	19 (3)

Autonomy

The mean score for autonomy was 4.8, falling in the moderate range. Accordingly, survey results showed that about half of the respondents agreed their jobs offered opportunities to work without close supervision, decide things for themselves, or have a lot of say about what goes on in their jobs. Our interviews showed similar results revealing that teenagers have somewhat limited opportunities to determine what they do at work or how they do it. Rather, they are generally given a pre-determined list of tasks and specific instructions on completing them. As put succinctly by one food service worker: “They tell you what to do, and you do it.” Others commented:

Margaret (concessions attendant):

Everything is kind of, not rigid, I would say there are certain ways you should do things. I can’t make decisions if a customer has a complaint. I have to call the supervisor for them. There isn’t much room for decision making.

Melissa (hostess/waitress):

You have a set thing to do, like they have what you do on the board. Like if you do birthdays they write parties and you’re supposed to stick with them. Or you have side jobs that you are supposed to do. Unless the manager asks you, you don’t do anything else really.

Often, teens indicated that when independent decision-making and control does exist, it centers largely on task order and scheduling:

Erica (kennel worker):

I don’t get a whole lot of freedom on what I do but I can choose like, when I do it. It’s not like I get to make really like exciting decisions, like oh what am I going to do today but, like well I could get a drink and then do the trash and then I could break down syringes or I could start the laundry.

Daniel (waiter):

We have like side work that has to be done and like, we have stuff we have to prepare for dinner and all that stuff so we can do it like before we start working, or we can do it afterwards.

Chanthy (hair stylist):

My boss, she asks me, “Oh, do you want to clean up the supply room first or you want to do the cashier first or you want to restock the room? Or you just want to just have your break right now?”

While some teens expressed a desire for more decision-making authority at work, saying that it would make them “feel important” and that it would mean they “had a voice in the company,” others explicitly stated they did not want more decision-making authority, as one sales associate commented, “. . . I don’t think I would be able to handle it.” Some teens seemed glad that they did not have very much decision making responsibility and that they appreciated the order provided by having a somewhat rigid structure to their work. One food server commented: “They just tell me, ‘oh yeah, do whatever you want,’ and I am like, ‘what am I supposed to do?’ If I just wing it, I feel lost.” When we explicitly asked about whether they wanted more decision-making authority most teens said they did not. One sales associate articulated nicely what a lot of teens expressed to us, saying, “I don’t think I would be able to handle it. I understand I am only eighteen I don’t really understand what is best for other people or what’s best for the store. Maybe when I get older and I understand more about the business, what makes it work and what decisions are good and what decisions are bad, then maybe. Right now, I am happy with what I am doing.”

Among those teens who had decision-making authority over others, some expressed conflict about it saying that they did not necessarily enjoy their authority to make decisions because having such authority created tension between them and the other workers, especially older coworkers:

Robin (hair salon receptionist):

I have too much [authority] I think. Because I’m so young and the stylist, like she’s 40 something, and I think she’s gonna think that she’s getting bossed around by a 17-year-old and I don’t want it to be like that.

Cara (sales associate):

Most of the time people who don’t [get to make decisions] tend to not like you as much because you have more of a say. Like, I tell people what to do, like if we’re slow, I tell them, ‘you clean this’ and ‘you straighten up that’. I’m just a kid, that’s how I see myself, and I’m telling this 40 year old woman what to do so it’s kind of iffy.

Helping

The mean score for helping was in the high range at 7.2, the highest of all scores. Our survey showed that nearly all respondents felt that their jobs provided opportunities to help others. In talking to the youth, several mentioned that they helped customers as part of their jobs, yet most comments were about the ways in which they help or are helped by their coworkers. Even though adolescent jobs tend to lack team tasks, where a group works together on a project, teens often described themselves as being part of a team, or working in a team environment where lots of giving and receiving of help occurs. Typical forms of help described included helping coworkers complete their tasks, primarily when things get busy or when they are short staffed:

Mathew (big box store stocker):

We all work together in order to get our goals done, so like each day we have to do a certain thing, like a certain aisle needs to be completely stocked or blocked, and we all help each other out in that area.

Daniel (waiter):

We always help like the staff out in the kitchen if they are like short staffed and we have an extra person we can go in and help them out and do that.

Melissa (hostess/waitress):

Co-workers help each other out all the time. If you need a table wiped down and you don’t have time to do it someone will come wipe it down for you.

When asked if they enjoyed helping others, one cashier’s comment demonstrated the increased feelings of competence and valuing of the intrinsic rewards of work that research suggests would result from acts of helpfulness at work: “Yeah. It makes me feel like I have learned something, that I can actually help someone else out.”

Skill use

The mean score for skill use was 4.4; falling in the moderate range. Survey responses showed that half or fewer teens agreed that their jobs required creativity or a high level of skill to perform. Most agreed (half agreed strongly) that their jobs were repetitive, yet over 80% also viewed their jobs as having task variety. Our interview findings were no different; teens generally viewed the skill requirements of their work as very minimal, describing them as jobs that most anyone could learn in a very short period of time:

Erica (kennel worker):

“I think anyone can learn it. Once you learn how to do it, it’s pretty easy. I think it requires a lot of training and habit but it does not require like intellectual skill. The hardest thing I have to do is count how many trash bags I have to carryout to the other room to put in the trashes.”

Sydney (cashier):

I don’t have many math skills. The computer does everything for you.

Cara (sales associate):

“Everything is like self-explanatory. You could probably put a 5 year old in front of the computer and have them ring a customer in ‘cause it prompts you with the little questions and you put in the answer.”

Some teens did feel that some level of skill was required in their jobs, mainly “people skills,” which was commonly identified as one of the things teens were learning at work (discussed below). Several quotes illuminate the level of people skills and emotional labor required in many teen jobs:

Maria (sales associate):

“I learned how to work with people and patience and humoring them and amusing them. You have to put on a smile for them. Just basically tell them what they want to hear.

Melissa (Hostess/waitress):

“I also learned patience. You have to do a little acting with the customers I guess. They tell you to leave all your problems at the door and just go into work smiling and stuff.”

Cody (copy center attendant):

“Being able to communicate with all different people, ‘cause in any job setting you see and meet so many different people, and you have to learn how to talk to them, ‘cause they’re all very different and have different needs.”

Learning

On the cusp of the high range at 5.7 was the mean learning score. Accordingly, a majority of survey respondents said that their jobs provided learning opportunities. Over two thirds felt that the new things they have learned will be useful to them in the future, yet very few considered their jobs as being connected to the kinds of work they hope to do in the future. In fact, the mean future–work connection score was the lowest of all scores at 3.1. In our interviews, we took the opportunity to ask teens more about what they felt they were learning at work. The most common answers were, “how to interact with people,” “to be respectful to others,” and “patience.” In addition to learning these “soft skills,” teens also told us that much of what they are learning in their jobs is how to work harder, faster, and more efficiently, as well as how to work as part of a team:

Jonah (fast food worker):

“I learned how to work more as a team. ‘Cause at [company name] if you’re on drive-thru you have to work as a team, so I picked up that. I don’t know I just learned more hard work. It was hard work.”

Gina (concessions attendant):

“I can work more swiftly now. Usually at the end of the night you will have to clean up after your stand so basically I know how to clean up in under, like a half an hour. I also handle cash faster, calculating the order and giving change back and all that stuff.”

Cody (copy center attendant):

“In general, probably working effectively. Just knowing how to make the most use of your time and how to deal with a customer on like what they need, how to respond to their needs, how quick to do it.”

Supervisor and coworker support

The mean scores for supervisor support and coworker support were 6.1 and 6.3, respectively; falling in the high range. A large majority of survey respondents reported having supervisor support and coworker support with only 18% reporting they had experienced hostility or conflict from either their supervisors or coworkers. In talking about their supervisors, the most common descriptors the teens used were “nice,” “understanding” and “friendly.” One cashier commented: “It’s not even like we’re employees. It’s like we are semi-friends. She’s just so nice and understanding.” Many youth also commented on how involved and helpful their supervisors were with one concessions attendant saying of her supervisor: “He’s always stopping by and asking how things are going and do you need help with anything. Every time that I’m having trouble all I have to do is just call him on our little walkie-talkie and then he’ll be there and he’ll just stay there. He’ll stay for a half an hour helping me out and serving the customers and everything.”

Young workers also told us that having a supportive supervisor not only made them feel respected, understood and valued, but it also motivated them to go to work and made them want to do a better job:

Maria (sales associate):

“If I respect and care for him [the supervisor] then I’m going to make sure I do my job a lot better than for someone I don’t.”

Margaret (concessions attendant):

“I think it gives you motivation to go to work, just be happier in your workplace and that’s a thing that you really need to have where you work to be happy with it.”

Relationships with coworkers appeared to be equally as positive. Most teens talked about how their coworkers were their friends, how much they cared about each other and helped each other out on the job. The friendships established with coworkers were often described as work-related friendships, with only a few teens saying that their friendships with co-workers extended beyond the workplace. Interviews also revealed that some young workers see their friendly interactions with coworkers as a means to cope with the monotony of their work. One cashier noted: “We talk about our personal lives with each other. We share stuff like, oh, I’m having a prom . . . or like we broke up with our boyfriend or something. We always like talk . . . we use it as a way to get by work. You know what I mean.”

Negative Characteristics of Work

The scores for both negative work characteristics, work stress (4.6) and work–school conflict (3.3), fell in the moderate range (Figure 1). The only statistically significant demographic difference among the negative characteristics was that females had a lower mean work–school conflict score (3.1) compared to males (3.6) t = -2.18, p = .030. Below we look at each negative construct individually and consider the survey results (Table 3) and interview findings together.

Table 3.

Percent of Working Adolescents Endorsing Characteristics of Their Jobs Associated With Negative Psychosocial Developmental Outcomes (n = 238; 2004).

Work characteristics and measures (Cronbach’s α)	“Agree” or “Strongly agree” (“Strongly agree” only)
Work stress (0.62)
“My job requires working very fast.”	73 (24)
“My job requires working very hard.”	75 (27)
“I am free from conflicting demands that others make.”	66 (9)
“I have enough time to get the job done.”	95 (18)
“I am not asked to do an excessive amount of work in my job.”	56.7 (2)
Work–school conflict (0.65)
“I have less time for homework because of my job.”	33 (9)
“I am distracted in class by thinking about my job.”	8 (2)
“Being a worker and a student is stressful.”	52 (19)

Work stress

The score for work stress was 4.6, falling in the moderate range. The majority of survey respondents agreed or agreed strongly that they are required to work very fast and very hard in their jobs, yet nearly all felt they were given enough time to get their work done. In our interviews, teens elaborated that they usually had to work fast and hard when things got busy or when they were short staffed:

Timothy (food service worker):

“Sometimes you have to work fast. When it’s really busy, you feel like you have to just rush and just get it done. Or there’s sometimes you just feel laid back and just do it.”

Erica (kennel worker):

“It totally depends on the day. If it’s a really busy day then there’s usually a lot of other stuff going on and I have to work harder.”

Sydney (cashier):

“When you’re there for the busy hours it can be hard and then you have to deal with what everyone wants you to do. Sometimes I have to do everything. Sometimes I don’t have a bagger, and people are waiting.”

The need to work fast seemed to be a particular stressor when the work involved interacting with customers, which was really the major source of stress mentioned by the teens we talked to:

Gina (concessions attendant):

“You are in a big rush in the intermission, everybody is waiting and they’re all complaining. You can hear the complaints going on while you are trying to work as fast as you can.”

Alice (bakery cashier):

“You have those customers that come in and they’re like ‘you made my coffee wrong and I don’t like it. I came in here seven times and you still make it wrong.’ And he like overreacted and threw the coffee all over the counter. I was scared because I was new.”

Timothy (food service worker):

“I was working at a sandwich stand and the food wasn’t really thawed out and so a customer came back to complain, ‘Oh, I don’t want to eat this it’s cold and frozen. I want my money back.’ That was one situation where it was kind of tense. I didn’t know how to handle it and had to call the supervisor to handle it.”

Dealing with disgruntled or difficult patrons was often mentioned when we asked teens to name the things they liked least about their jobs. A particularly striking comment came from a food service worker who said, “I didn’t know there were so many mean people out there.”

Work–school conflict

The work–school conflict score was among the lowest at 3.3. Half or fewer survey respondents agreed that their jobs get in the way of doing their homework or that they are distracted in school because they are thinking about their jobs. Similarly, most teens we interviewed did not feel that work and school conflicted with each other yet some did mention difficulties with managing both their job and their school responsibilities. These teens said that, because they have to go straight to their jobs from school they sometimes have trouble finding the time to do their homework or study. They also mentioned that because they are too tired when they finally do sit down to study, they have difficulty absorbing the material. One sales associate describes it this way: “School ends at two so I go directly from school to work, then I get home and shower. It will be about ten o’clock, so I have to do all my homework. I will have to stay up until twelve o’clock in the morning. Sometimes with reading, you just have time to skim and you don’t even know what you are reading.”

Many interviewees said that when they have a lot of homework or have multiple assignments due in the same week, they really begin to feel the stress of doing double duty as a worker and a student.

Margaret (concessions attendant):

Basically, when I have a lot of work at school. So when there is like 5 papers due the next day and it’s a Sunday night and you’re working, it gets hard. Usually I try to manage my time better than that so I don’t have to cram it all in.

Maria (sales associate):

Sometimes it can be stressful because sometimes you will have three tasks in one day and then you work. Like you have a big test on Friday and you work Wednesday and Thursday from three to nine and there’s like no time for studying.

Discussion

The results of this study indicate that adolescent workers are employed in jobs that can be characterized as providing moderate levels of both the work characteristics that promote positive and negative psychosocial outcomes. Where adolescent jobs offer the greatest chance for encouraging positive outcomes is in the opportunities they present for youth to be helpful and to a lesser extent, to be around supportive others and learn new things. Many of the adolescents in our survey reported that their jobs possessed these qualities and rated them highest among the positive work characteristics, which is an encouraging finding considering the psychosocial benefits these characteristics may promote (e.g., competence, self-efficacy) and the positive work-related attitudes and habits they may foster (e.g., desire for skill development, positive work ethic).

Through our interviews we also found that being exposed to these particular work characteristics appears to support the development of some of the character traits that parents, in particular, hope work will encourage in their children. Specifically, we found that through the acts of helping and receiving help, for example, youth learned important lessons about building interpersonal relationships, trust and reciprocity, and the value of cooperation and teamwork. Youth also talked about learning patience, respect, and how to communicate with others. These are the responses that students provided and reflect their reported beliefs. While some question whether young people can accurately attribute what they have learned to its true source (Bowman, 2010; Bowman & Seifert, 2011), our results demonstrate that adolescents believe they have learned very particular lessons as a result of the work in which they are engaged.

Our results on social support also suggest that positive relationships with supervisors may produce some very concrete work values. The teens we interviewed said that having a supportive supervisor not only made them feel respected, understood and valued, but it also motivated them to go to work and made them want to do a better job, which is consistent with previous findings on social support (Loughlin & Barling, 1998; Stone & Josiam, 2000; Vazsonyi, 2008). The interview findings suggest that through work, adolescents experience valuable life lessons and develop social skills that encourage maturity and help teens appreciate the adult world and how to navigate within it. These are precisely the types of lessons that parents and adolescent development experts alike expect work to teach young people. Buttressing these positive findings is the fact that very few teens rated their jobs as producing work–school conflict, which can encourage negative work values, depression and self-derogation, among other things.

The findings described above are very positive, yet on other measures of work quality, teen jobs did not fare as well. Our results showed that teen jobs offered moderate levels of autonomy, skill use and connection to one’s future employment goals. That teen jobs are somewhat lacking in these positive qualities is notable because such characteristics have significant potential to affect adolescent psychosocial well-being and thus, may be among the most desirable. Because there is no definitive science, that we are aware of, which has determined the level of the characteristics needed to produce the attendant outcomes, it is difficult to determine whether a moderate level, as we have measured it, is sufficient or deficient. We can only say that there is room for scores to increase.

Although this study suggests that about half of all young workers report having opportunities to exercise autonomy in their jobs, these findings are diminished by our attendant interview results that suggest a lack of substance in such opportunities. Opportunities for self-direction, according to interviewees, consist mainly of determining task order rather than higher-level decision making. Our findings on the minimal skill use in teen jobs are of particular concern because skill use is one of the most widely studied work characteristics and is associated with more positive outcomes than most other work qualities including, competence, higher internality, greater life satisfaction, less depression, positive work values and attitudes, and less substance use (see Table 1). When the comments of interviewees regarding the lack of skill required in their jobs are considered alongside the fact that 90% of survey respondents said their jobs were repetitive, the lack of challenge in teens’ jobs becomes even more evident.

With respect to future work connection, our results were not surprising as it is widely accepted that many teen jobs are temporary and not usually taken as a means of directly preparing one for a specific future career (save some school-to-career placements or vocational apprenticeships). College serves this function for most adolescents, however, only 30% will earn a 4-year-degree by ages 25 to 29 (National Center for Education Statistics), thus there is cause for concern that only one-third of respondents indicated that their jobs are preparing them for the kind of work they hope to do in the future.

Also on the negative side, we found that teens experience moderate levels of work stress, particularly those who work with the public. Because work stress is associated with an array of psychosocial detriments including increased depression and self-derogation, and decreased internality (see Table 1), we feel that even the moderate level of work stress reported by survey respondents warrants attention, particularly if caused by angry customers, who are responsible for a large portion of the workplace violence experienced by adult (Erickson, 1996; Peek-Asa, Casteel, Kraus, & Whitten, 2006) and adolescent workers alike (Rauscher, 2008; Schat, Frone, & Kelloway, 2006). Others may feel differently about work stress. For example, it has been suggested that work stress can provide a learning experience that can increase effective coping strategies for adolescents when confronted with stressors later in life (Mortimer & Staff, 2004).

Issues for Further Study

There are several important issues that we feel need further consideration in studies of work quality. Our results have shown us that more research is needed to assess how adolescents understand the concepts we use to measure work quality. Our experience with measuring autonomy illustrates this point. We found that roughly half of those surveyed agreed with the following statements: “My job allows me to make a lot of decisions on my own,” and “I have a lot of say about what happens on my job,” yet when we asked youth about what kinds of decisions they make at work, most mentioned being able to determine the order in which they accomplish assigned tasks and scheduling, perhaps not what adults might consider when they think of having autonomy. Another example is understanding skill development from a teen’s perspective. How does a teenager define “skill?” Understanding how teens make meaning of these aspects of their work is critically important to how we assess work quality and how quality may differentially impact psychosocial development.

Another important issue is that job characteristics that might be positive for adults may not be so for teenagers and, further, they may not be positive for all teens. The literature finds this to be particularly true with respect to autonomy and skill use, which have differential effects across genders (Call Thiede et al., 1995). As noted earlier, most prior research shows that acting autonomously in one’s job can lead to positive psychosocial outcomes, yet other findings demonstrate that autonomy may have negative consequences for young males. Our interview results confirm that autonomy, in particular, is not something universally viewed as a good thing by teens of either gender, and suggest that the relationship between autonomy and its positive outcomes may depend on the nature of the particular decision-making demands being placed upon a young person and the desire for such demands on the part of young workers. Further study is needed to learn under what conditions positive work characteristics, such as autonomy, lead to positive outcomes and when they lead to negative outcomes. In addition, further study of autonomy at work is needed to understand the developmental affects it may have on youth and how these affects impact the occupational and educational aspirations of youth. For example, might they enjoy the autonomy they are given at work and seek out more or might they be wary of the responsibility that autonomy holds and seek less, which in turn may affect their career or occupational aspirations?

Strengths and Limitations

The main limitation of this study is its small sample size. This, combined with the limited geographic representation, may restrict the generalizability of our findings. A second limitation is our reliance on subjective self-assessments that were not validated using alternative measures such as direct observation. Finally, we caution that our results, particularly those from the interviews, may be biased in a positive direction since they were obtained from teens who volunteered to participate, and who may have had more positive feelings about their work and were thus more willing to share their opinions with us.

These limitations notwithstanding, this study provides some of the most recent evidence on the prevalence of work characteristics associated with psychosocial development among the jobs held by adolescents today. Previous studies examining adolescent work quality have varied substantially in methods of assessing “quality of work,” including use of a mathematical computation of work duration and work intensity (Cunnien et al., 2009); a proportion of earned wages to hours worked (Hirschman & Voloshin, 2007); or self-reported, closed ended responses to items from questionnaires (Staff & Schulenberg, 2010). What these studies have lacked are the voices of teenage worker. The mixed methods approach used in the present study has provided an opportunity for youth to explain their work experiences, which illuminated the quantitative findings.

Conclusions

Over the past several decades, the number of working youth, and the amount of and types of work they do, have fluctuated with shifts in our economy that have dictated changes in labor markets, wages and job opportunities. In recent years, labor force participation has declined among adolescents and, in 2010, teenage employment rates fell below 30% for the first time since World War II (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000a, 2009). Nevertheless, work remains an integral part of the lives of so many adolescents and an activity to which they devote a substantial amount of their free time. Therefore, it is vitally important that the time adolescents spend at work be time well spent.

In the Progressive Era, compulsory schooling laws were introduced because it was thought that the main task of childhood was to receive an education (Trattner, 1970). At the same time child labor laws were passed that limited the hours youth could spend at work and the types of jobs they could perform in order to protect their health and morals (Trattner, 1970). These laws are still in place today, as the value we place on the education, health and morality of our young people remains of paramount importance. However, the value that we place on work for adolescents is also very high, as are our expectations about its benefits.

Teens typically value work because it offers them financial independence from their parents, while parents value work as an aid in their children’s transition into reliable, confident and independent adults who know the value of money and who possess positive work habits. Although work can deliver on many of these promises, our study supports the notion that work itself is not wholly positive. This study finds that the jobs held by young people today may possess only moderate levels of the qualities that promote positive developmental outcomes, while also possessing moderate levels of qualities that produce negative impacts, suggesting a fairly mixed set of experiences among today’s working youth. These findings urge us to consider ways in which work quality can be improved to maximize work’s potential to contribute positively to the psychosocial development of adolescents.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Kimberly J. Rauscher, MA, ScD is Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, West Virginia University School of Public Health, Morgantown, WV. Her research focuses on work quality and occupational safety and health among US youth. Recent publications include a study of social disparities in adolescent occupational injury, young worker fatalities involving violations of US child labor laws, and workplace violence against adolescents.

David H. Wegman, MSc, MD is Dean Emeritus of the School of Health and Environment and Professor of Work Environment at University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research has addressed epidemiology of occupational risks, study of public health and policy concerning hazard and health surveillance, epidemiologic methods of exposure assessment and use of participatory methods. He was Chair of the National Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Protecting Youth at Work, which synthesized the literature on youth employment and health and set forth policy and research recommendations for ensuring the health and wellbeing of young people in the workplace.

John Wooding, PhD is Professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development and the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His teaching and research interests include occupational safety and health and environmental regulation, science and technology policy, international labor movements, and political theory. He has published numerous articles on work environment policy and has authored two books on the political economy of the work and health.

Letitia Davis, EdM, ScD is Director of the Occupational Health Surveillance Program in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health where she has worked for the last 20 years conducting state-wide surveillance of and research on work-related illnesses and injuries. She is adjunct faculty of the Department of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Harvard School of Public Health. She has published on young worker exposures and injuries and is a nationally recognized figure in the area of adolescent occupational health.

Rozelinda Junkin, is a graduate student in the Department of Community Medicine at West Virginia University. She is working toward a Master of Public Health with a focus on Health Policy and Management. Her research interests include analyzing the effectiveness of public health policies in promoting safety and wellness, and specifically, reducing unintentional injury.

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