Session: Estimating Patterns of Involvement in Gainful Activities and Family Capital Investment to Predict Life Outcomes during Transition to Adulthood (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

As social science researchers examine the mechanisms through which social systems influence positive outcomes of youth and young adults, the predominant focus has been on focusing on a few select indicators and statistical approaches to understand social phenomenon. For instance, for youth involved with the criminal justice system, success or failure is generally examined based on recidivism rates. Similarly, in many other areas of social work practice, there are major approaches that predominate the field and perhaps limit our understanding of the mechanisms through which social systems influence life outcomes. The papers in this symposium seek to demonstrate how innovative approaches could be used in two distinct areas: 1) Mechanisms through which serious adolescent offenders become productive adults. 2) Mechanisms through which parental investments influence young adults' achievement. The first two papers present innovative measures and statistical approaches implemented to understand gainful activities for serious adolescent offenders and family capital that contemporary families use to invest in their offspring. The third paper demonstrates how one of these approach could be used to examine influences in other life outcomes (educational attainment).

The first paper, “An examination of the latent structure of family capital estimated using family background resources and processes measures”, uses longitudinal data of a national sample of young adults and seeks to identify the latent structure of the family capital construct when estimated using select measures family resources and processes. A 4-factor model emerged with Family Involvement, Economic Capital, Social Networks and Closeness-to-Parental Figures as key ingredients in the stock of Family Capital. A call is made to researchers to employ this multi-dimensional family capital construct to examine its effects on other life outcomes.

The second paper, “Who will become productive adults? Longitudinal patterns of gainful activities and institutional placement among serious adolescent offenders”, uses a 7-year longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders and seeks to examine how patterns of gainful activities and institutional placement are related to later adult outcomes. Four groups emerged: Those with consistently high patterns of involvement in gainful activities, those with consistently low levels and two groups in the middle who seemed to diverge into the higher or lower groups at the end of the study period.

The third paper, “The relative effects of different forms of family capital on young adults' educational attainment”, is a response to the call made in the first paper and demonstrates how the latent family capital construct could be used to predict educational attainment of young adults. The paper finds that the latent family capital construct is a promising and adequate measure in predicting educational achievement with some factors positively and consistently doing so while others are predictors only with addition of controls.

Altogether, these three papers highlight unique ways in which researchers and practitioners could expand their understanding of mechanisms of change by innovating and moving away from utilizing dominate approaches in their field of practice. This could possibly help us gain new insights into mechanisms for achieving equal opportunity, equality and justice for all.