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Within the past twenty years, the transition to adulthood has become a burgeoning area of research. The status attainment process, an early model for transition to adulthood research, has given way to research focusing on singular outcomes such as completing formal education, leaving home, obtaining employment, forming a union through marriage or cohabitation, and becoming a parent. As young adults continue to delay family formation, some argue that one’s first experience of heterosexual intercourse is also a symbol of adult status (Meier, 2001). Although most scholars agree that these outcomes along with chronological age symbolize being an adult, relatively few empirical studies examine them as inter-dependent transitions. A recent comparison of these indicators by gender, race, and social class is also needed.

Purpose – Conservative Protestantism is conceptualized as a cultural framework influencing class formation and transmission in the United States.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The framework is tested using Public-Use Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Waves I, III, and IV. Four key outcomes – educational attainment, earnings, marriage, and parenting – are modeled as functions of class background and religious affiliation, controlling for other factors.

Findings – Religious affiliation and their effects on the normative pathways to adulthood help explain differential social mobility and the imperfect transmission of social class across generations. Religious culture plays an independent role in producing lower adult attainment via the life choices of conservative Protestant youth during the transition to adulthood.

Research limitations/Implications – This study is limited by the final age range (24–32 years) of the sample in Wave IV.

Originality/Value – Contributes to literature on conservative Protestants' educational attainment and labor force participation by charting the educational and income achievement of youth from varying class origins and identifying how childhood class location and childhood religious affiliation interact to affect adult socioeconomic status.

Research into the experience of BSc Psychology students and graduates in the graduate transition was carried out to enquire if ontology is central to educational transformation; if professional work experience is important in the process of becoming; and how graduates experience the transition from student to professional. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this qualitative longitudinal in-depth interview investigation four one-year work placement students were interviewed twice and five graduates were interviewed at graduation and again two years later. Student transcriptions were analysed thematically and graduate transcriptions received interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Placement students became legitimate participants in professional life. Graduates thought that BSc Psychology should enable a career and were dissatisfied when it did not. Professional psychology dominated career aspiration. Relationships and participation in work communities of practice were highly significant for learning, personal and professional identity and growth.

Ontology may be central to educational transformation in BSc Psychology and is facilitated by integrated work experience. A more vocational focus is also advocated.

The UK Bachelor’s degree in psychology is increasingly concerned with employability however becoming a professional requires acting and being as well as knowledge and skills and Barnett and others have called for higher education to embrace an ontological turn. This is explored in the context of BSc Psychology student experience and reflection on work placements, graduation and early career development.

It is generally agreed that marketing campaigns developed for western markets may not be appropriate for consumers living in eastern cultures, particularly with respect to strategies for promoting luxury brands. While consultancy reports and media commentaries show that rising levels of disposable income are driving increasing demand for luxury goods in China and Taiwan, for example, the academic literature offers very few consumer research findings clearly elucidating the different luxury purchasing behaviour of eastern and western consumers. The purpose of this paper is to compare the consumption of luxury products and luxury fashion purchasing habits in Taiwan and the UK, with particular reference to the fashion sector, focusing on a strategically important emerging market segment: young consumers of luxury brands.

To achieve the study’s objectives, questionnaires were administered online in each of the two countries to females aged 18-26 years, who had made more than two luxury purchases in the year preceding the survey. Employing a two-wave survey, respondents were selected via social media and personal contacts in the UK and by means of snowball sampling in Taiwan.

The study found one major point of difference among many similarities: the Taiwanese buyers scored significantly higher on indicators that they were treating luxury brands as a means of developing their self-identity and communicating their social standing: an important part of maintaining “face” in Asian cultures. These findings contain important strategic implications for luxury fashion brand managers developing marketing campaigns for the promotion of their brands in the distinctive cultures of Taiwan, Mainland China and their neighbours.

The study reported in this paper compares the consumption of luxury products in Taiwan and the UK, with particular reference to the fashion sector. The study contributes to existing knowledge by evaluating differences and similarities in: first, the luxury fashion purchasing behaviour of young women in Taiwan and the UK; and second, the ways in which the two sets of consumers use luxury fashion products as an extension of their selves.

This article discusses the attempts by the National Health Service (NHS) to develop medical managers, following the introduction of general management in 1983. It suggests that problems have arisen because, so far, it has been organisational considerations and not those of individual career paths which have informed these developments. It is suggested that this new approach could lead to the development of the NHS as a learning organisation within the context of the original policy objectives.

Previous research has demonstrated the positive impact of relocation mobility on career success. Based on conservation‐of‐resources theory and knowledge about resistance to change, this study aims to explore the role of personality dispositions and social orientations in explaining job‐related relocation readiness.

A total of 380 German employees (study 1), unemployed individuals (study 2), and apprentices (study 3) were surveyed on their relocation readiness, personality dispositions (neuroticism, openness to experience, uncertainty tolerance), and social orientations (individualism, collectivism, social norms –i.e. the perceived social endorsement of relocation mobility) in three cross‐sectional studies and one longitudinal study (study 4).

Findings show that high levels of neuroticism (study 1) and collectivism (studies 1‐3) made individuals less ready to relocate, whereas high levels of openness to experience (study 2), uncertainty tolerance (studies 1‐2), and individualism (study 3) were positively associated with relocation readiness, as was the perceived social endorsement of relocation mobility (studies 1‐4).

Personality dispositions and social orientations should be considered when relocation decisions are at stake. The research focused on relocation readiness and did not investigate actual relocation mobility.

Human resources management and career counseling aiming to foster relocation readiness should take account of the social environment. Moreover, uncertainty‐intolerant individuals should be offered systematic, step‐by‐step guidance on how best to deal with relocation.

The study is the first to show that personality dispositions and social orientations by far outweigh socio‐demographic factors in explaining relocation readiness.

Purpose – Our study focuses on the impacts of young adults’ financial situation and agency on success and satisfaction regarding developmental tasks (attainments in educational, work and social domains) in the context of economic upheavals.

Methodology/approach – The study is part of the longitudinal Finnish Educational Transitions Studies (FinEdu), in which high school students (N=614 at baseline) participated once before and three times after graduation (ages 19–25) while progressing to tertiary education and employment.

Findings – Agency (indicated by achievement and social approach strategies) increased, whereas achievement and social avoidance decreased from ages 19 to 25. Financial situation improved from an objective but not subjective perspective. Both high and increasing levels of agency were related to high levels of success and satisfaction regarding developmental tasks at age 25. In particular, social approach was related to educational attainment, sense of belonging, and romantic relationship satisfaction. High initial levels of agency and an improved financial situation predicted low economic pressure at age 25.

Research implications – Both sociopolitical structures and individual agency are important in shaping life course transitions in early adulthood. The apparent discrepancy between the macro-level national economic recession and young adults’ relatively high economic satisfaction could be explained by high agency in a welfare state context.

Social implications – The study shows important links between individuals’ life course and the societal context of Finland, a secure Nordic welfare state in the midst of global economic upheavals.

Originality/value of paper – Our longitudinal study makes a significant contribution to life course research by comprehensively conceptualizing the developmental tasks and considering their individual and social determinants.

Effective transitions from child and adolescent to adult services are important for continuity of care for patients with eating disorders. This study aims to examine the relative importance of a series of statements about the transition process, elicited from an earlier service evaluation, from the perspectives of patients, parents/carers and clinicians.

Twenty-eight participants completed a Q-sort task ranking 40 statements, developed from an earlier study, using a normal distribution pattern on a scale, which ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree, to identify their priorities for transition. Analysis resulted in the extraction of four factors explaining 52% of the variance.

Four distinct factors were elicited: “parents and carers need including too”, “facilitating effective transfer between services”, “supporting the patient through transition” and providing “timely, patient-centred care”. The study enabled similarities and differences in priorities to be observed for the three respondent groups.

These rankings, noting the differences between the respondent groups, can be used to inform the development of effective transition protocols. This study suggests these protocols should ensure a person-centred approach; timely planning; include parents/carers; provide continuous care and have good transfer of information and sensible timing of transitions. Differences in priorities/opinions can be addressed through open communication channels.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first UK-wide study examining priorities for transition from the perspectives of patients, parents/carers and clinicians.

There is a dearth of research on what constitutes effective transfer of care from children’s and young people services to adult services for patients with eating disorders (EDs) in the UK. Transition has implications for continuity of care and particularly for early intervention which has the best prognosis. The purpose of this paper is to understand the experience of transition and identify facilitators and barriers to this.

Qualitative methodology was used. Focus groups (n = 4) were held with clinicians (n = 22) working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services or adult ED services. Individual interviews were conducted with patients (n = 5) who had commenced/completed transition to adult services and with parents/carers (n = 6) of patients invited for interview.

A number of factors may facilitate or impede transition and can be grouped into the broad themes of communication, managing the differences between services and timing of transition. Improvements in communication, clear explanation of service differences and flexibility around the timing of transitions may enhance the experience for patients and parents/carers.

The service evaluation was limited to transition between two specialist ED services in one geographical location. The findings provide the basis for a wider research study to examine which factors are most important when planning transition from the perspectives of patients, parents/carers and clinicians.

This is the first study examining ED transitions in the UK. It provides valuable insight of the experience of service users and carers and highlights potential improvements when planning transitions for this patient group.

The Epidemiologic Transition can help us understand a fundamental puzzle about aging. The puzzle stems from two seemingly contradictory facts. The first fact is that death rates from noninfectious degenerative maladies – the so-called diseases of aging – increase as people age. It seems to be at odds with the historical fact that for nearly a century in which people were aging more than ever before, the aggregate rates of such diseases have been decreasing. In what sense can both be true? Crucial to resolving the puzzle are the age-profiles of such diseases in cohorts that grew up in the different regimes of the Transition. For each cohort, noninfectious diseases had increased with age, resulting in an upward-sloping age profile, which affirms the first fact. As the regimes were transitioning from the Malthusian to the modern one, however, the profiles of successive cohorts had been shifting downward: death rates from noninfectious diseases were shrinking at each age, signifying the newer cohorts’ greater aging potentials. The shifting profiles had been renewing the cohort mix of the population, shaping the century-long descent of such diseases in aggregate, giving rise to the historical fact. The profiles had shifted early in the cohorts’ adult years, associating closely with the newer epidemiologic conditions in childhood. Those conditions appear to be a circumstance under which aging potentials of cohorts could be misgauged, including in one troubling episode in the first half of the nineteenth century when the potentials had reversed.