How Stress Influences Purpose Development: The Importance of Social Support

Abstract

The present study explored the influence of psychological stress on the development of purpose among youth of color living in urban, low-income communities. A qualitative approach based on grounded theory was used to understand how stress-related experiences influence the development of youth purpose in participants’ own words. Findings revealed that participants faced substantial psychological stress in their lives resulting from financial, family, academic, vocational, peer, neighborhood, relocation, and immigration-related stressors. Moreover, stress appeared to act as a barrier to purpose development in two common ways: (a) through youths’ perceptions of impossibility of realizing their goals for the future and (b) through youths’ experiences of regularly being overwhelmed to the point where purpose engagement was not a priority. However, stress could also serve as a motivator to purpose development for youth through (a) pressure from important others who held high expectations and (b) strong desires to escape from contextual stressors, such as violence or financial strain. Four patterns emerged from the data indicating that social support could serve to mitigate stress, propelling youth to develop a sense of purpose.

Keywords

stress purpose adolescence youth youth purpose positive youth development

The adolescent years have long been considered a particularly vulnerable phase of development—a time when youth struggle to form a sense of identity and define themselves in relation to the world beyond their families (Erikson, 1968). It is a stage marked by rapid and simultaneous physical growth, neurological, and psychological change (Yurgelun-Todd, 2007), and exposure to an expanding social environment and changing roles. These multiple transitions can contribute to a sense of heightened stress (e.g., American Psychological Association [APA] Stress Report, 2014; Compas, Connor-Smith, Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001; Smith & Carlson, 1997). Indeed, adolescents report higher levels of stress than both children (Stroud et al., 2009) and adults (APA Stress Report, 2014). Studies of U.S. middle and high school–aged students have found that between 31% and 70% of students experience overwhelming levels of stress on a consistent basis (e.g., APA Stress Report, 2014; de Anda et al., 2000; Demerath, lynch, Milner, Peters, & Davidson, 2010). There is a well-documented negative association between the experience of stressful life events and both physical and mental health (e.g., Compas, Orosan, & Grant, 1993; Seiffge-Krenke, 2000; Smith & Carlson, 1997). Depression and low self-esteem become far more prevalent in adolescence (e.g., Cicchetti & Toth, 1998; Compas et al., 1993; Leadbeater, Blatt, & Quinlan, 1995). Approximately one in five adolescents meet the criteria for a mental health diagnosis, and 20% to 30% of adolescents experience at least one major depressive episode before reaching adulthood (Costello, Copeland, & Angold, 2011).

For many adolescents, systemic barriers add a physical and emotional toll on well-being during this already vulnerable developmental period (Fine, Burns, Payne, & Torre, 2004). Forms of marginalization, such as racism and classism, have been shown to negatively predict psychological well-being (Ryff, Keyes, & Hughes, 2003) and are at the roots of race and income-based disparities in achievement and success (Fine et al., 2004; Flores, 2013). For example, poverty and systemic racism cause many young people of color to experience disproportionately more limited access to schools with qualified teachers (Department of Education, 2016; Fine et al., 2004), fewer options for advanced coursework (Department of Education, 2016), greater school overcrowding, poorer school building quality and sanitation (Fine et al., 2004), lower academic achievement, greater gaps between vocational aspirations and expectations (Flores, 2013), as well as higher likelihoods of school suspension, expulsion, and non-completion (Department of Education, 2016). Importantly, despite considerable within-group variation, socioeconomic status and race are highly related, with Black, Native American, and Hispanic youth disproportionately poor, while White youth are disproportionately affluent (Flores, 2013). Moreover, poverty is associated with more frequent exposure to uncontrollable and threatening life events, such as violent crime, infant mortality, diseases from all causes, accidents, marital dissolution, and homicide (Smith & Romero, 2010). Taken together, high-poverty, urban environments and school systems serve to marginalize and negatively affect youth development for a large subset of U.S. adolescents (e.g., Evans & Cassells, 2014; Fine et al., 2004; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002; Wilson, 2011) who may already be facing high levels of stress during this developmental period (APA Stress Report, 2014).

Despite the large body of research substantiating a link between the experience of stress and negative mental health outcomes, as well as the evidence of high levels of stress experienced by marginalized adolescents (i.e., those who encounter systemic barriers), there are individual differences in the development, experience, and responses to such stressors, and many youth demonstrate resilience (Costello et al., 2011; Hollenstein & Lougheed, 2013; Kessler, Avenevoli, & Merikangas, 2001; Masten & Tellegen, 2012). In particular, positive youth development (PYD) scholars have identified “youth purpose” as a developmental asset and an indicator of thriving in adolescents (Bronk & Finch, 2010; Damon, Menon, & Cotton Bronk, 2003). Youth purpose is “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self” (Damon et al., 2003, p. 121). Qualitative research has found youth purpose to be associated with a greater sense of resilience in the face of various psychological stressors among high-achieving adolescents (Spencer, Walsh, Liang, Mousseau, & Lund, 2016). Purposeful, future-oriented adolescents are more likely to be academically engaged and successful than peers exhibiting a less developed sense of purpose (Damon, 2008). In addition, the development of purpose during adolescence is associated with reduced risky behavior (i.e., alcohol and drug use), and better psychological adjustment (i.e., greater self-esteem, and less anxiety and depression; Bronk & Finch, 2010; Damon, 2008; Damon et al., 2003).

Although fostering purpose may hold promise for promoting the positive developmental trajectories among marginalized youth, literature exploring youth purpose has primarily been based on White, affluent populations (Liang et al., 2016). Given that close to 20% of youth in the United States live in poverty, and demographic shifts reflect an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse U.S. population (Flores, 2013; U.S. Census, 2016), it is of high importance to examine factors that may promote the vocational and academic development of non-White and non-affluent young people. The dearth of such literature is reflective of a long-standing and problematic “invisibility” (Lott, 2002, p. 101) of groups within academic conversations that have historically been marginalized, such as the poor (Lott, 2002), people with little choice in their vocational lives (Blustein, 2006), and people of color (Flores, 2013). This paucity of information on a sizable portion of the U.S. population has led to calls for an intentional focus on the lives and experiences of individuals who have been neglected in the literature (Blustein, 2006; Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016). The present study aims to extend literature on youth purpose by focusing on the experiences of youth who have—in line with this longstanding trend—been left out of the early youth purpose research, such as youth of color and youth living in high-poverty environments or attending resource-poor, urban schools.

In a few exceptions to this overall scarcity of research on non-affluent, and non-White youth, positive, protective effects of youth purpose have been found for youth from ethnically diverse, low-income backgrounds (Liang et al., 2016; Liang et al., 2017; Pizzolato, Brown, & Kanny, 2011). For example, developing purpose among diverse youth has been associated with higher GPAs (Pizzolato et al., 2011), and successful high school graduation (Liang et al., 2017). In related research with inner-city, youth of color, those who were purposeful and future-oriented performed better academically than peers who lacked future goals and aspirations (Adelabu, 2008). Moreover, the association between future orientation and academic achievement seems consistent across ethnicity and race (Seginer, 2009). Thus, existing literature indicates that youth purpose is relevant, yet understudied among ethnically, racially, and socioeconomically diverse young people.

It would stand to reason that given the negative consequences of adversity (Ryff et al., 2003), marginalized youth would face barriers to purpose development. However, some research and theory has pointed to the potential for early life adversity to actually help cultivate purpose (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009; Liang et al., 2016; McKnight & Kashdan, 2009; Ryff et al., 2003). For example, Kashdan and McKnight (2009) have proposed a “reactive pathway” to purpose development, meaning that a reaction to formative life events is one pathway to purpose. Duckworth and colleagues (Duckworth & Gross, 2014; Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007) have posited that certain individuals possess “grit” (i.e., character traits such as passion and perseverance) for pursuing their goals. More recent findings (Liang et al., 2016) suggest that a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic resources shape youth purpose. For example, factors supporting purpose development among diverse youth include passion (i.e., a sense of being inspired by and motivated to engage in one’s purpose), prosocial benefits (i.e., a belief in the benefits and beneficiaries of one’s goals), and people (i.e., supportive adults who serve as a catalyst for initial interest in a particular purpose, as well as a source of scaffolding support for engaging in activities relevant to it).

Findings that support from an adult mentor figure (e.g., teacher, coach, parent) can play an important role in shaping youth purpose (Liang et al., 2016; Liang et al., 2017; Blattner, Liang, Lund, & Spencer, 2013; Spencer et al., 2016) corroborate a large literature on the importance of social support—defined as a multidimensional construct involving instrumental (helping involving giving of time, skills, and finances), emotional (caring, empathy, love, and trust), informational (advice-giving), and appraisal (providing feedback) support—in adolescent development (Rueger, Malecki, Pyun, Aycock, & Coyle, 2016). Although adolescents’ social environments change, and peer relationships become an increasing focus at this time in life, support from significant adults continue to be important at this age and beyond (Liang, Spencer, Brogan, & Corral, 2008; Rueger et al., 2016). For example, a recent meta-analysis of 341 articles demonstrates that social support in youths’ lives has robust direct effects on outcomes such as depression (Rueger et al., 2016). Findings from this meta-analysis also revealed that highly stressful contexts may keep youth from fully benefiting from social support (Rueger et al., 2016). Among youth from underprivileged backgrounds, attention from adults may be compromised for a number of reasons, including inflexible work demands among low-income parents (Heymann & Earle, 2000) and limited teachers due to school overcrowding (Fine et al., 2004). Thus, extant literature indicates that the role of social support in shaping youth purpose may be both particularly important, though potentially less available, for young people from underprivileged backgrounds. Research examining the role of social support in promoting youth purpose among young people who experience high levels of stress is needed, as such research may serve to inform interventions that promote PYD among these youth.

The present study aims to build on the growing body of literature on youth purpose research by exploring in-depth the environmental experiences in an understudied population in this field—youth of color from low-income, urban communities. Specifically, this study examines the influence of stress on the development of purpose in this population, and ways in which environmental experiences with, for example, social support, systemic racism, and poverty might serve as barriers and/or motivating forces toward purposeful action (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009; Liang et al., 2016; Ryff et al., 2003). Using a qualitative approach informed by grounded theory enabled the researchers to understand participants’ perceptions of their experiences.

Method

Participants

Participants included 19 adolescents (see Table 1). Nine of the participants self-identified as Black/African American, four as Hispanic/Latino, two as Cape Verdean, two as multiracial, one as West Indian, and one declined to provide any racial or ethnic background information. All participants lived in an urban context, specifically in the greater metro area of a large city in the northeast. Students from participating school systems predominantly came from low-income neighborhoods that have median household incomes ranging from US$30,654 to US$45,807, compared with a wider state median household income of US$68,563. Percentages of households below the poverty line in the neighborhoods where most students resided ranged from 20% to 32%, while the state household poverty rate is 8%. Moreover, students were primarily based in the city neighborhoods with the highest unemployment rates in the area, which ranged from 16% to 17%. The state unemployment rate is close to 4%.

Table 1.

Participant Demographic Information.

Pseudonym	Grade	Sex	Racial/ethnic background
Faith	11	Female	Black/African American
Lydia	12	Female	Black/African American
Jessica	12	Female	Black/African American
Antoine	10	Male	Black/West Indian-Barbados
Martin	10	Male	Black/African American
Angela	12	Female	Hispanic/Latino
Esther	9	Female	Black/African American
Bryan	12	Male	Black/African American
Lakeisha	12	Female	Multiracial (European White, Cuban, and Jamaican)
Daryn	High school [did not specify grade]	Male	No response
Imani	8	Female	Hispanic/Latino
Jerika	8	Female	Hispanic/Latino
Jasmine	8	Female	Hispanic/Latino
Doug	8	Male	Black/African American
Tyrese	8	Male	Multiracial
Alma	8	Female	Cape Verdean
Erika	8	Female	Cape Verdean
Andre	8	Male	Black/African American
Jerome	8	Male	Black/African American

Participants were recruited through an independent, tuition-free middle school for children from families facing economic constraints and an educational and mentoring program for high school students with the objective of increasing student access to and success in higher education. Participants were invited to be interviewed and were entered into a raffle to win a US$5 gift card as an incentive for participating. Participation was voluntary. Parental consent and participant assent was obtained, as was approved by the Boston College Institutional Review Board.

Nine of the participants recruited were from the middle school. Within this school, 100% of students were identified by school administration as low-income, and 99% were youth of color. The school is located in a low-income, racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood of their city. Students attending the middle school had 12-hour school days Monday through Friday and small class sizes.

The other 10 participants attended the educational program for high school students (see participant grade information in Table 1). All students in this latter program were enrolled in an urban public school system with a high prevalence of financial need. Seventy-eight percent of students within this school system qualified for free lunch, more than half were classified as economically disadvantaged (i.e., in foster care or receiving government assistance), and 87% were youth of color. Through the program, students attended classes on a local university campus two Saturdays each month. Some students elected to come to the program during the week to participate in additional courses or to receive tutoring.

Procedure

Participants were interviewed in either their school or educational program setting. Interviewers for this study were a diverse group of graduate students from a social justice-oriented counseling program who frequently consider issues of power, language, and context affecting youth in research and practice settings. After receiving careful training in conducting qualitative interviews with youth, interviewers interviewed participants during the school day or mentoring program at a pre-arranged time that was deemed convenient and non-interruptive of learning activities by program and school staff.

Interviewers conducted in-person, semi-structured (Seidman, 1991), and in-depth interviews (Creswell, 2013; Johnson, 2001). Open-ended questions were used, providing the opportunity for participants to describe their personal experiences involving purpose, stress, coping, important relationships, and goals. The final interview protocol was informed by youth purpose literature. Questions included, “Can you describe your relationship with friends, parents, teachers, and other family members or mentors?” “Do you ever feel stressed?” “What makes you feel stressed?” and “What are your goals for the future?” In answer to these questions, participants were invited to elaborate and to provide examples. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed using HyperTranscribe software. Pseudonyms were assigned to each participant to further ensure confidentiality. Research assistants verified each transcription before beginning analyses, which involved listening to each audio file twice and correcting errors made during the first round of listening to the transcriptions.

Reflexivity

The examination of researchers’ values, biases, and positionality was an integral component of both the data collection procedure and subsequent analysis (Tracy, 2010). Indeed, researchers inherently approach research endeavors not as blank slates, but with diverse experiences, unique understandings of participants, and an ostensibly well-intentioned agenda (Seidman, 2006). The authors sought to conduct research that honored the voices of youth, benefited their communities, and represented a non-hierarchical partnership. Indeed, a commitment to social justice inspired the study’s focus on cultivating purpose among diverse youth from underrepresented backgrounds. However, as researchers, the authors acknowledge that they stand to benefit from such partnerships (e.g., publications and grants). Throughout the various stages of the study (e.g., interviews and interpretation of results), the authors worked to critically reflect upon differences between themselves and the participants (Segall, Lonner, & Berry, 1998), to guard against thinking too highly of their expertise, and to constantly refer back to the youths’ perspectives. In the end, although the authors intended to represent youths’ voices, the actual findings and interpretations may more accurately be thought of as a “third voice”—co-constructed with the participants through an iterative process of considering their perspectives, and the author’s own (Lykes, Blanche, & Hamber, 2003).

Analysis

The methodology and analysis by the interviewers and authors of this work were informed by a strengths-based, PYD framework (Larson, 2000). Despite efforts made to understand the participants through a strengths-based lens and give voice to underrepresented youth, the authors acknowledge that power imbalances between participants and researchers and the perspectives with which their experiences are viewed may certainly shape the reported findings from these interviews. Thus, the authors recognized and reflected on inherent power differentials and they strove to maintain awareness that they carry with them their training, their own ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and other differences from the participants.

An approach inspired by grounded theory methodology was used to analyze the 19 interviews (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Typically, the first step in grounded theory methodologies is to conduct open coding. As such, research assistants first identified codes through a round of open coding by reading each of the transcripts multiple times. This process yielded three major codes: (a) stages of purpose development, (b) perceived sources of stress, and (c) supportive relationships. In the next round of coding (axial coding; Strauss & Corbin, 1990), research assistants identified subcodes within the larger aforementioned categories.

Subcodes were identified both inductively and deductively as a way to examine if emerging themes from the participants had any relationship with aspects of previous literature. For example, stages of purpose included purposeful, dreamer, dabbler, and drifter, which were taken deductively from the literature on stages of purpose (Damon, 2009). Because purpose development takes different forms at different life stages, youth in early adolescence (the middle school sample) were considered purposeful if they demonstrated an orientation to purpose development and active engagement (Malin, Reilly, Quinn, & Moran, 2014), even if they did not articulate a particular vocational/post-graduation aspiration. For example, a middle school participant who stated wanting to attend college to help his or her family and who was working hard to achieve good grades was deemed purposeful even if he or she did not articulate a specific post-graduation role beyond attending college. For the older adolescents in our sample, participants were considered purposeful if they specified an aspirational role that they were working toward in addition to active engagement in their purpose (Malin et al., 2014). For example, a youth who stated that he wanted to become an engineer to build something that will contribute to society was working diligently in his math classes and was building devices in his spare time was considered purposeful. Other subcodes were formulated through an inductive process, which aimed to fully capture participants’ experiences and analyze the relationship between stages of purpose and factors relating to stress. For instance, two subcodes for perceived sources of stress were family and school stress, and three supportive relationships subcodes were teachers, friends, and parents.

Once all major and subcodes were identified, three authors coded all interviews for the established codes and subsequently shadow-coded each other’s work. Shadow-coding entails coders carefully reviewing another coder’s work, and collaboratively discussing coding decisions to ensure rigor and agreement (Smagorinsky, 2008). When needed, the team discussed discrepancies in coding and resolved them accordingly. Notably, the team met multiple times to discuss emerging themes in the data. To facilitate the analytical process, the first author created conceptually clustered matrices (Miles & Huberman, 1994) that were assembled and organized by the identified major and subcodes. Matrices were constructed for each code by including all relevant quotations for each participant associated with a category. This organization allowed for cross-case analyses, which provided a more comprehensive understanding of the data.

After considerable discussion of apparent themes and associations between codes, the research team wrote memos for all participants’ interviews on the association between stress and purpose development. Social support emerged as an overarching, highly salient factor influencing this association. Given these initial findings, the final phase of coding (selective coding; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) involved examining the interviews in search of the influence of stress on purpose, the role of social support, and degree of purpose development for each participant. Four major patterns were identified and are described in the sections below.

Results

Participants described substantial psychological stress resulting from financial, family, academic, vocational, peer, neighborhood, immigration, and relocation-related stressors (see Table 2). Stress appeared to serve as both a barrier and a motivator to purpose development for participants. Specifically, they commonly described psychological stress to be a barrier in one of two ways. First, they expressed feelings of hopelessness due to the stressors—a sense of impossibility of realizing their goals for the future. Second, they expressed feeling largely overwhelmed by stressors such that they lacked the “bandwidth” to think about their future and engage in purposeful activity. On the other hand, students also spoke of psychological stress as a motivator in two ways. They relayed the importance of pressure from important others who had high expectations, as well as a strong desire to escape from contextual stressors, such as violence or financial strain.

Table 2.

Sources of Stress.

Source of stress	Participant	Quote
Financial	Jerika	And, another thing that is extremely annoying is just the lack . . . of currency. I need money! I can’t survive in this world without money, like I need . . . I’m waiting for the school year to be over because . . . I want to be able to get a job!
Academic/vocational	Angela	She assigns a whole lot of assignments and she’s never in school because her husband had open-heart stuff. That just stresses me out. It’s just—school stresses me out in general.
Family	Jasmine	[My mother and I] don’t really get along. I have a lot of older brothers and sisters, but they don’t love me ’cause of my biological father. Me and my brother have always been close, but he did something that messed up the family a lot. We’ve been in a really bad place for a few years now, and my younger sister, I mean, me and my brother grew up without our dads and stuff and she has her dad with her by her side all the time. It feels like she gets a lot of favoritism.
Peer	Lydia	With friends, when they’re not honest, not trustworthy, you thought they were the person that they were, and then all of a sudden they all change on you and stuff. Yeah, that stresses me out.
Neighborhood	Jerome	At a park one day, it was me and my friends, and one my friends started to become idiots and do dumb things and I was just caught in the middle of that. This guy, maybe in his teens, he came over and saw what we were doing and they jumped me and my friends.
Immigration	Esther	This one time, at school, I was really mad and the teacher kicked me out. Wow. It was annoying. I was speaking my language in class and she don’t like that or whatever. But I don’t care. I didn’t care. I was speaking it anyway, but she kicked me out.
Relocation	Angela	I’ve moved a lot constantly throughout my life, so, when I moved to this school, I just found it pointless to make friends here, because I was going to leave again. Well, I thought, but I’ve been here for three years. I don’t feel like I belong here.

Analyses revealed four patterns among participant interviews that represent combined ways in which stress and social support interacted to affect purpose development (see Table 3, Figure 1). Social support from parents, teachers, and peers in the form of emotional, instrumental, appraisal, and informational support (Rueger et al., 2016) played an important role in the relationship between stress and purpose. Specifically, a subset of purposeful participants who experienced psychological stress as a barrier to purpose development described how social support mitigated this stress, enabling them to engage in purpose. Participants who both experienced psychological stress as a barrier to purpose development and lacked social support showed little purpose development and engagement. Importantly, only two participants who lacked social support demonstrated purpose. The paragraphs that follow describe these four patterns in detail.

Table 3.

Stress, Support, Purpose.

Pattern	Stress	Support	Purpose
Stress as a Barrier, Low Social Support, Low Purpose (Esther)	My dad is really old. He’s the one that pay college for my brothers and sisters. So, I be worrying that if when it’s my turn to go to college, if something happen to him, if I don’t get a scholarship, like he won’t be able to pay my college, and then I will just sit there and not go to college because nobody can pay for me. I always worry about that. (Impossibility)	My relationship with [my family]? I don’t really have a relationship with them. I don’t have a relationship with nobody. I just live in the same house with them.	Interviewer: Do you have any long-term goals? Participant: No
Stress as a Barrier, Social Support as a Mitigating Agent, Purpose (Doug)	School sometimes, like classes sometimes, classes sometimes stress me out, like if I think I can’t do the work, it like stresses me . . . I was having trouble in school, like, from stress. (Overwhelm)	When I was really young, when I was younger, like, two, three years ago, I didn’t think I was good enough to be a basketball player. My friends motivated me to do better. And, I motivate myself and push for the goals that you wanna have in life. And now that, and now people say that I’m a really good basketball player. But I was down on myself before.	Well I wanna start off by going to Kansas University, and try to be a basketball player. But, if that doesn’t work out, or if I become a basketball player, and, after that, my back-up plan is to study sports management in college, so I can become a coach, general manager, things like that. I wanna be, I want my life to be based on basketball . . . I think that I’m going to reach my goals, and if it’s not a basketball player, like I said, I’ll study sports management.
Stress as a Motivator, Social Support, Purpose (Angela)	My mother kind of guided me towards the direction [of going to college]. I don’t know how to explain that. It’s just like, she didn’t go, and I know she didn’t go, so I knew I had to do something that no one else has done . . .My goals I have is to graduate high school because I’ll be the first to do that in my family. To go to college. That’s my main priority right there. I’ll be the first to do that, as well. And, actually to graduate from there, as well, because I’ll be the first. It’s a lot of pressure, you know. I’m gonna do it. (Pressure from Important Others)	It’s like [my mom and I are] friends. But then there’s that time when she has to be that mother figure, so, that’s basically it. Since I was little, we’ve always had that relationship. She wasn’t really close to her mother, so her goal was to be as close to her daughter as she has been . . . And she just motivates me even when I’m like stressed out. And she’ll give me advice and stuff.	I have a lot of goals set for myself. I’m an overachiever and really like to set rules, so I’m organized and all that . . . I’m in between because I want to go for psychology and social work . . . Working in the system with the kids that I wanted to work for.
Stress as a Motivator, Low Support, Purpose (Daryn)	Like violence . . . I kind of live a double life, because I’m around it, a lot. Yet, when I separate myself to take care of whatever I need to take care of, like a performance, or preparing myself for a performance, like being in the studio or just writing songs, or whatever, I’m no longer in that mind-set. I’m just thinking about: ok this. And when it comes down to that, to me, like none of that stuff ever happened . . . I’m never really away from it, but it’s like my focus is just completely switched . . . to me, it’s like all those worlds get pushed aside whenever I’m in my musical zone. (Escape)	My mom, well, I don’t know my father, so my mom has only been to maybe two of my performances, and I’ve performed about 30 times now. Um, so I’ve, to me I’ve never really gotten that, um, support that I’ve always been looking for.	To me it’s like, for music, music is my life. I tweet it every day, like if music never existed I don’t know what my life would be like. And I like tweet like, “Thank God like whoever created the first musical thing, did that!” And so that we could get to the point that we are now, because music, honestly, music really is my life. And like most things, like whenever I’m down I listen to music, whenever I’m happy I listen to music, just to change my mood, I listen to music. So it’s like, I just really want to be like a better performing musician. I want to be the best I can be, at being a musician. And to me, when I get in the zone, or when I’m ever around other musicians, I just feel like my only focus needs to be: me being a musician. I don’t need to focus on anything else.

Figure 1.

Patterns of stress, social support, and youth purpose.

Stress as a Barrier, Social Support Absent, Low Purpose

Several students represented the first pattern: (a) psychological stress was highly salient and primarily functioned as a barrier to purpose development, (b) little to no social support was present, and (c) participants showed low purpose development. For example, Jasmine described how stressful relationships at home and with friends made her feel overwhelmed on a daily basis: “I get really upset, like, I get really upset. I get depressed . . . Normally I’ll come to school with, like, a whole bunch of baggage.”

Jessica described psychological stress resulting from being overwhelmed with the responsibility of having to care for her younger brother, and how this responsibility kept her from engaging in future-oriented activities, such as going to the library:

Oh, mostly I would have been able to go to the library or stay after school, but now, like, I usually, ’cause my brother goes to school now, I usually pick him up. And, it’s not like, I don’t want to do it, but sometimes I wish that I could but then, I think about like, it makes it easier for my mom. ’Cause then she doesn’t have to pay for a babysitter. And so, it’s like, I don’t mind it, it’s just that it gets frustrating sometimes ’cause he just annoys me so much. He just like brings out the worst in me that I never knew I had.

Specifically, Jessica described having to care for her younger brother as both a frustration and a source of stress, as well as an impediment on the time she would have preferred to spend on academics. Participants in this category also described how psychological stress caused them to believe that their goals were unattainable or “impossible.” Esther revealed her worries about paying for college (see Table 3). Jessica expressed a similar concern:

Is it really worth it? ’Cause, even though my mom said that she’s gonna help pay, but is it really worth it to have that big chunk of debt?

Finally, Imani recounted discouragement from her mother when she communicated her goal of becoming a forensic scientist: “Um, sometimes . . . ’cause, like, I don’t, forensic scientists, [my mom] always says, ‘It’s so hard and dahdahdah’ . . . ”

Each of these participants expressed having little to no social support. Esther, whose parents lived in Haiti at the time of the interview, described the absence of a relationship with the relatives with whom she was residing (see Table 3). Jessica explained her situation:

Jessica:

I don’t have any friends that I go out with. I’m a loner. I don’t really have friends like that. I have people I talk to, but it’s not like, I can call them up one day, and they’d be free and then we can go somewhere . . . Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. Because, most times, I think it’s about this insecurity of mine. ’Cause I don’t really, like, have all those experiences other, other kids do. ’Cause I feel like, it’s more like I’m always alone and, most of the time when I’m with a group, I feel like I’m still outside of it . . .

Interviewer:

Is there anybody you feel—even maybe an adult or a mentor or your mom, or anybody—that you feel like you could talk about, just about anything with? Or do you like to keep that to yourself?

Jessica:

I like to keep things to [myself] because, it’s much easier that way. ’Cause sometimes it’s hard to explain myself . . . then, it’s better to just say nothing.

Beyond this sense of isolation that Jessica described, some participants in this category described stress in relationships with important others, such as family and significant adults, resulting in the absence of a safe place for them to go to for support. For example, a number of youth portrayed their families as sources of conflict and hurtful interactions, rather than as supports. Jasmine described her relationship with her mother and siblings, “[My mother and I] don’t really get along. I have a lot of older brothers and sisters, but they don’t love me ’cause of my biological father.” Imani recounted her interactions with her mother, “at the beginning, I used to listen, but then after she yells, she always says something and it’s, ‘Ok Ma!’ and I just leave.”

Participants in this pattern showed little purpose development. Even among youth in this category who named a particular vocational aspiration, interviews revealed that there was no real understanding of what the vocation entailed and no indication of any engagement in activities relevant to pursuing the named vocation/purpose.

Stress as a Barrier, Social Support Present, Purpose

Representing the second pattern, several participants described: (a) psychological stress primarily functioning as a barrier to purpose development; (b) social support as present, which served to mitigate stress; and (c) purpose engagement and development. For example, Tyrese described how being limited financially has been stressful as it made his pursuit of desired academic opportunities seem impossible:

It has been really stressful, ’cause I made a mistake of only applying to one high school, that I really wanted to go to . . . and I ended up getting accepted, but not getting enough money to go . . . It’s last minute now, and I only have one high school to go to. And I’m not happy with it . . . It makes me feel even worse about the . . . crack slipping, because I know a student who’s really bad, who goes to that school and he still does. And there’s even more cracks at that school. There’s cracks at every school, but at this particular school, there’s more cracks . . .

Jerome described feeling overwhelmed by stress in his life:

Jerome:

I’m always, I don’t know how to say this, but like sometimes I respond negative when I’m, when somebody says negative things about me. Like that’s the negative thing about me that I have: sometimes anger can control me. Sometimes I can control myself, but, yeah, me and my sister have that problem.

Interviewer:

Both of you?

Jerome:

Yeah.

Interviewer:

Um, would you say that that part about you stresses you out at all, or do you worry about that?

Jerome:

Yeah. It stresses me out.

Jerome’s difficulty controlling his anger is a pattern he is aware of as limiting his social adjustment. He described knowing this about himself as a source of stress. Furthermore, experiencing difficultly regulating anger may be emblematic of the high levels of stress that Jerome and his sister experience. Doug also spoke of being overwhelmed on a regular basis (see Table 3).

Each of the participants in this category spoke of the importance of social support as a means of mitigating the impact of the psychological stress on their lives. Doug explained how encouragement from his friends kept him from being “down on himself” (see Table 3). Jerome explained how important adults were there to support him:

[My teachers have] been motivators to me because my teacher has helped me reach my goal of going to Boston Arts Academy . . . [If I had a problem] I could go to someone in my family, or any other teacher, because I feel like they’re all open, and they all make time for you. They’ll always make sure that everything’s okay and if it’s not, then they’ll make sure it’s fixed.

Tyrese had a similar perception of his parents and teachers: “I can go to my parents about anything . . . some teachers are really close, but overall, I’m really close to all of them.”

Despite experiencing psychological stress that served as a barrier to purpose development, these participants demonstrated purpose. Doug, for example, described his plans for the future, named both long- and short-term goals, and was actively engaged in pursuing his purpose (see Table 3). Jerome described his long-term goal of becoming an actor, his active engagement in the acting club at school, and his short-term plan of attending a local Arts Academy.

Stress as a Motivator, Social Support Present, Purpose

Representing the third pattern, several participants described (a) psychological stress primarily serving as a motivator to purpose engagement, (b) social support and encouragement from important others, and (c) purpose engagement and development. Participants in this group spoke of pressure from important others who held high expectations for them as inspiring an active engagement in purpose. For example, Antoine discussed his parents’ expectations for his performance in school, “[My parents] expect me to perform really well in school. They notice my proficiency in math . . . I feel like I have to live up to it just to appease myself, in a way.” Angela spoke of how her mother’s path of not having attended college affected her commitment to furthering her education (see Table 3). Lydia shared the impact that her family narrative and the sacrifice of her parents has had on their expectations for her achievement:

My mom and my parents, they’re not originally from here, so they came to America. So they have to work really hard, really hard to give us everything that we want. And for [my siblings and me, my mom] wants us to take education seriously, so in the future, we won’t have to struggle as much as she had to struggle . . . Like, [they want] me to have like a good education. ’Cause both of my parents, they don’t have like . . . They only have up to a high school diploma. That’s about it. And they want, for us, they want more. Like, they want us to be doctors, like lawyers, and stuff because they have high expectations for us.

Several participants described a desire to get away from contextual stressors as propelling purpose. Martin described how financial concerns have propelled his short- and long-term goals:

[My current goals are] saving, investing, making sure that I won’t have any money issues. I want to start now, [rather] than having to start when I’m like 21 after all these loans and being in debt. I’m going to have to start now so I can be able to pay for college and not have any debt.

These participants also described the presence of social support. Angela described a sense of closeness with her mother (see Table 3). Martin described his relationship with his boss:

My boss is like my big brother. He knew me since I was younger and I feel like he allowed this [job] and he saw that it would benefit me and it actually has . . . he’s experienced and went through similar things, so he’s like a mentor. He is my mentor, literally.

Lakeisha explained the qualities in the relationship with her teacher that she has found supportive:

He’s really easy to talk to, because, I feel like it’s probably because he was the same type of kid when he was younger. We listen to the same type of music . . . and he’s the one that made it possible for us to have instruments, it’s like, he went out on a limb for us, so it’s easier to connect with him because, we have more, more of an understanding kind of . . . I ask him about a lot of advice about where, if I’ve done something wrong with trying to be a friend or, you know. So it’s really easy for me to talk to him about those type of things, and he makes it easier for me because he’s willing to share more . . . he’s like, he’s like a friend/father.

Each of the participants in this group demonstrated a sense of purpose. Angela described her long-term goals for the future, as well as her active engagement in pursing those goals (“I have a lot of goals set for myself . . . I really like to set rules, so I’m organized and all that . . . I want to go for psychology and social work . . .working in the system with the kids,” Table 3). Martin stated his goals for the future this way:

I want to be a sound and lighting engineer. I’m a tech right now. After I go to college, I think it’ll change to an engineer . . . I feel like if you find something that drives you, like, for me, if you’re driven, you can accomplish anything . . . Like, it’s what I want. It’s what God wants for me, and what I can do to, you know, build that. So, it’s like I want to be successful, I want to be in that field.

In addition to speaking about his current active engagement in his purpose, such as his excelling in math and planning to buy computer parts, Antoine described his long-term future ambition:

I do have a goal for one thing that I want to at least do when I’m an engineer: to build something that the world will remember. Something that will stick for a long time. Years. Decades, even . . . because for a product to stick around that long, you have to have changed a lot in how we live our lives. Which is, in the end, that’s one of the main goals for almost any engineer.

Stress as a Motivator, Social Support Absent, Purpose

Representing the fourth pattern, a small number of participants described (a) stress as a motivator to purpose development, (b) a lack of social support, and (c) the presence of purpose (see Table 3). Daryn described how engaging in his purpose allowed him to get away from contextual stressors such as violence, to which he was regularly exposed: “when I get in the zone, or when I’m ever around other musicians, I just feel like my only focus needs to be: me being a musician.” Alma expressed the pressure she experienced from her parents to form goals for her future:

Alma:

They have like goals for me to succeed. They just want to see me make something . . .

Interviewer:

Do you know what success means to them?

Alma:

Like, getting out. Just . . . Not dropping out of high school, just because they did. They want more for us. So they sacrifice things for us.

Daryn articulated a lack of social support, indicating that his mother never went to his music performances (“I’ve never really gotten that, um, support that I’ve always been looking for,” see Table 3). Alma described how she perceived her relationship with her parents this way:

Interviewer:

Are you [and your parents] close?

Alma:

Um . . . Not really.

Interviewer:

Has it always been that way?

Alma:

Yeah.

Alma, in the eighth grade at the time of the interview, expressed her goal of going to college and her active engagement toward this goal:

Alma:

I just like keep going. I’m not going to stop just because of it. And I keep pushing myself . . .

Interviewer:

Is there something that you really feel that you’re working towards when you push yourself—something that you want?

Alma:

I want to go to college.

Daryn expressed his desire to work toward being “the best I can be, at being a musician” (see Table 3), a task that he actively engaged in by performing on a regular basis. Importantly, other than these two examples, no participants in the sample expressed having a sense of purpose in the absence of social support.

Discussion

Results from this study confirm and build on previous literature that examines pathways to purpose (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009; Liang et al., 2016; Liang et al., 2017; McKnight & Kashdan, 2009). Each participant in the sample faced psychological stress, which could serve as a barrier as well as a motivator to purpose development. Participants for whom stress served as a barrier expressed (a) consistently feeling overwhelmed or a (b) perception of impossibility, both of which hindered the development of youth purpose. Participants for whom stress served as a motivator described experiencing (a) pressure related to high expectations from important others, or (b) a desire to escape from contextual stressors. These findings support suggestions that early life adversity can serve to promote purpose development, as has been suggested by other scholars (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009; Liang et al., 2016; Ryff et al., 2003), and indicate that psychological stress may impede purpose development for some youth.

These findings underscore the positive influence of social support on youth purpose development, a finding that has been previously identified in other studies of youth purpose (Blattner et al., 2013; Liang et al., 2016; Malin et al., 2014). Our study builds on existing literature, demonstrating the importance of social support in the relationship between stress and purpose, particularly for diverse youth who experience psychological stress as a barrier to purpose development. For participants experiencing psychological stress as a barrier to purpose, social support—when absent—was associated with a lack of purpose for participants, but when present, could serve to mitigate stress, aiding participants in their purpose development. Considering the finding that psychological stress could serve as a barrier when youth perceived their goals for the future as impossible, messages from mentor figures (e.g., parents, teachers, others who provide guidance and encouragement to the young person) that counter this perception may be important in influencing outcomes among youth who face systemic barriers. In addition, social support served to provide youth who experienced consistent, overwhelming stress, with a resource that helped them cope. These findings are consistent with evidence that youth continue to seek approval from parents and other significant adults into late adolescence and beyond (Liang et al., 2008). This research also expands on the research suggesting that individual character traits alone (e.g., grit and self-control) can predict who is successful in pursuing their goals (Duckworth & Gross, 2014; Duckworth et al., 2007) by indicating that additional external factors are significant.

With the presence of stress as a motivator to purpose development, two participants articulated developing a sense of purpose in the absence of social support. For these participants, purpose appeared to serve not only as an outcome of their experiencing stress as a motivator, but as a means of managing the high levels of stress they experienced by providing them with a healthy point of focus. This finding corroborates youth purpose literature that has pointed to the organizing effects of purpose (Bronk & Finch, 2010; Damon, 2008; Malin et al., 2014). For example, it may be that youth who consistently engage in purposeful activities reframe stressful situations in terms of the relevance to their larger purpose (Kashdan & McKnight, 2013). They may thus find daily stressors less threatening in light of their purpose and may also have an easier time navigating competing demands in light of their purpose. Given the small number of participants who met the criteria for this group, the mechanism by which stress serves as a motivator to purpose in the absence of social support should be further investigated. While it is notable that some youth continue to persist toward purpose in the face of extreme stress, previous research indicates that this is less common when there is a lack of social support. Furthermore, goals are difficult to achieve in general when social influences actively thwart their achievement, whereas social acceptance of purposes can reduce barriers (McKnight & Kashdan, 2009). Taken together, the findings may reflect the importance of positive, social supports as necessary resources for the pursuit of purpose, especially among those in high stress situations when youths’ personal resources are depleted.

Many youth who experienced psychological stress as a motivator to purpose development described the impact of contextual stressors. Specifically, youth described feeling driven to escape these stressors. Youth in this category also articulated stress resulting from pressure to meet high expectations from parents or teachers for their success. Despite youths’ comments that such pressure could be stressful, they expressed that having adults push them to reach their potential was beneficial. Indeed, high academic expectations for youth on the part of parents and teachers have been shown to be a robust predictor of academic success for youth of color attending urban, resource-poor schools (e.g., Benner & Mistry, 2007; Mistry, White, Benner, & Huynh, 2009).

The findings demonstrating the influence of social support and high expectations from important others, such as teachers and parents, in promoting youth purpose have important implications for policy and practice. While these results do not imply that social support and high expectations are sole factors that contribute to youth academic and vocational success above and beyond systemic, contextual factors, these results do indicate that educators, parents, and other figures in the lives of youth may have an important impact on helping to facilitate a young person’s sense of purpose despite the presence of stressors. In light of this finding, educational and therapeutic initiatives seeking to promote youth purpose among youth facing systemic barriers may focus on social support as a site of intervention. Educators may also be encouraged to reflect on their expectations for their students and confront any biases. Moreover, these findings underscore the importance of access to and attention from teachers and mentors for all youth, and the urgent need to address issues such as school overcrowding, and high teacher turnover that are endemic in many public school systems across the country.

Limitations

One limitation in the present study is the small sample size and the singular data collection method (interviews). Our findings may be bolstered by interviewing additional students, as well as by diversifying the sources of data (e.g., conducting interviews with teachers/parents or utilizing quantitative measures to assess purpose, stress, or social support). Moreover, our data represent the narratives of students at one time point from one area of the United States. The type and strength of social support may change over time, suggesting that collecting longitudinal data would be a compelling endeavor, and youth in diverse regions ostensibly experience unique stressors that were not captured in our interviews.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Taken together, psychological stress can both obstruct and propel purpose. Although some participants demonstrated purpose in the absence of social support when stress served as a motivator, for most, social support from parents, teachers, and peers was critical to fostering purpose development. Such a finding is particularly relevant when considering the context of youth who experience significant levels of psychological stressors. Future research using larger samples and diverse methodologies may further investigate moderating factors that influence whether stress serves as a barrier or motivator to youth purpose for similar populations.

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) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Boston College’s Collaborative Fellows grant.

Author Biographies

Ellen Gutowski is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College and has her master’s in mental health counseling, also from Boston College. Her research focuses on the career development of diverse populations, gender studies, and the shared spaces between the two.

Allison E. White is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College. She received a master’s degree in prevention science and practice from Harvard University. She studies the adolescent experience, with particular interests in promoting positive youth development through purpose cultivation and supporting adolescent relationships in the digital age.

Belle Liang is professor in Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology Program of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Her research focuses on positive youth development, especially the role of mentoring in cultivating purpose among youth from diverse backgrounds.

Alfred-John Diamonti is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College. He received a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Boston College. His research interest focuses on identity development through school and work experiences.

Danielle Berado is an analyst at Boston College and received her master’s degree in mental health counseling from Boston College. Her academic interests lie in adolescent and purpose development and what motivates their academic and career aspirations.

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