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The aim of this paper is to describe the use of sequence analysis to model trajectories of life‐course economic activity status, within a broader research agenda aimed at improving understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic position and health.

The analysis used data on 288 participants of the Boyd Orr Stratified Sub‐Sample, comprising a combination of prospective and retrospective information on economic activity status, as well as health in early old age. Economic activity was coded as a time‐based sequence of states for each participant based on six‐month periods throughout their lives. Economic activity was classified as: pre‐labour market; full‐time employment; part‐time employment; housewife; made redundant; stopped work due to illness; retired; other unemployed; or not applicable. Optimal matching analysis was carried out to produce a matrix of distances between each sequence, which was then used as the basis for cluster analysis.

The optimal matching analysis resulted in the classification of individuals into five economic activity status trajectories: full‐time workers (transitional exit), part‐time housewives, career breakers, full‐time workers (late entry, early exit), and full‐time housewives.

The paper presents the case for using sequence analysis as a methodological tool to facilitate a more interdisciplinary approach to the measurement of the life‐course socioeconomic position, in particular attempting to integrate the empirical emphasis of epidemiological research with the more theoretical contributions of sociology. This may in turn help generate a framework within which to examine the relationships between life‐course socioeconomic position and outcomes such as health in later life.

This research seeks to provide a historical review of the life cycle concept in marketing. The paper aims to show the development of traditional life cycle models and links to the life course perspective.

The authors relate to life events and transitions in consumers' life trajectories, life status, role transitions, and role identities as determinants of consumer behavior. The paper reveals future research potential in the field. Essentially, the authors demonstrate the need for life cycle models grounded on empirical data and discuss related methodological issues.

This paper provides a temporal systematization of theoretical and empirical life cycle research. The major outcome is an outline of conceptual and methodological research directions that enable researchers to follow the life course perspective and to derive empirically grounded life cycle models.

Providing chronological literature compilations and an evolutionary review of life cycle research, the authors identify future research directions. To encourage empirical development of the concept, the article also refers to the related methodological literature.

Both marketing thought and practitioners benefit from the insights presented. Marketing managers may better address consumers' changing needs over their lifetime, strengthen customer loyalty and reduce brand switching, thereby enhancing customer lifetime value.

This paper adds to the study of the consumer life cycle by providing a comprehensive anthology of life cycle research from 1910 to 2010. It shows major research streams and reveals future research potential in marketing.

This study aims to illustrate the viability of the life course paradigm (LCP), which is increasingly used by social and behavioral scientists to study a wide variety of phenomena, as a framework for studying the transformational role of service consumption in improving consumer well-being in later life.

The LCP is used to develop a life course model for studying the effects of service consumption on older people’s well-being. Previous research related to the consumption of specific types of services (financial and healthcare) is integrated within the multi-theoretical LCP to suggest relevant model variables and derive a set of propositions for illustrating the effects of service consumption on older adults’ well-being.

The research presented in this study shows how efforts to study the effects of service consumption on older people’s well-being can be improved by using the LCP, helps understand the onset and changes in service consumption patterns and illustrates an innovative way to study the role of services in promoting older consumer welfare.

By applying the principles and theoretical perspectives of the LCP, this study contributes to recent transformative service research efforts to better understand the impact of service consumption on people’s lives and the transformational role of services and service providers in improving consumer and societal welfare.

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.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe and evaluate the life grid as a methodology for historical research; and to provide an example application investigating the dynamics of family meals over a lifetime by pairing life course theory with the life grid method of obtaining oral histories.

To explore how the meanings and processes of meals change, the authors conducted interviews with 15 respondents aged 80 years old and over, on the topic of family meals.

The paper discusses the merits of using the life grid method to analyze lifetime family consumption behavior. The findings of this example study provide insight as to how the roles, responsibilities, and loyalties of our participants had changed through births, deaths, marriages, wars, economic periods, illnesses, and the process of aging, leading to changes in dining.

The benefit of the life grid method described in this paper is its ability to minimize recall bias. In addition, the overt process of cross‐referencing events throughout the course of the interviews via the life grid method proved to be a helpful aid in identifying patterns and symmetries during the interpretation stage.

Stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships are increasingly common as a result of relatively high rates of divorce and remarriage and increased longevity. When relationships are close, stepgrandparents may be valuable resources for stepgrandchildren, but the relational processes salient to the development of these ties remain largely unknown. The purposes of our research were: (1) to explore the complexity of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships, and (2) to examine processes that affected stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development.

We present results from four grounded theory projects, which were based on semistructured interviews with 58 stepgrandchildren who provided data about 165 relationships with stepgrandparents. Collectively, these studies highlighted key processes of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development operating within four distinct pathways to stepgrandparenthood – long-term, later life, skip-generation, and inherited pathways.

Stepgrandchildren’s closeness to stepgrandparents was influenced by factors such as timing (the child’s age and when in their life courses intergenerational relationships began), stepgrandparents’ roles in the life of the middle-generation parent and the quality of those relationships, whether or not the stepfamily defined the stepgrandparent as kin (e.g., through the use of claiming language), intergenerational contact frequency, and stepgrandparents’ affinity-building.

Our study furthers understanding of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild by attending to the importance of context in examining the processes that affect intergenerational steprelationship development. Exploring processes related to intergenerational steprelationships strengthens our understanding of the benefits and challenges associated with steprelationship development. Our study also sheds light on the “new look at kinship” and the processes that inform the social construction of family in a changing familial landscape.

An increasing amount of research and debate has emerged over the last few years, emphasising the need for developing digitally competent, literate, able, skilled, capable people within a constantly changing technological and online environment. Existing definitions and perspectives in this area go beyond the use of technological tools or media for the creation of a digital literacy mindset, which develops throughout one's life. However, Higher Education strategies have not yet caught up with this agenda.

A student survey with Library and Information Science students from three higher education institutions in Scotland, Ireland and Greece was conducted as a basis of empirical data to support the theoretical propositions of the study. The survey centred on the technical and higher-level digital competences of students and drawing from students' self-perceived digital competences for learning and for the everyday life digital context, addressing e-leisure, e-learning, e-democracy, e-government and e-health activities. The survey critically enabled students to assess digital competences from their perspectives as digital participants.

Students' self-assessment of digital competences were lacking in a number of areas, which involved the development of information literacy, digital creation, digital research and digital identity management. In addition, students' digital competences were found to be linked to previous experiences within the everyday life digital environment. The higher the self-perceived digital competence levels of students were on the basis of dealing with everyday life digital tasks, the more likely they were to also develop high self-perceived digital competence in other digital areas related to their education.

Higher education has not fully embraced digital competences as a core, fundamental literacy which addresses both technology mastery and a digital citizenship mindset. As emerging models begin to challenge traditional teaching and learning paradigms, with global connectivity and personalised approaches, existing digital divides may be further accelerated. This requires revisiting digital competences with emphasis on the diversity of the contexts where it develops and of the learners involved, in the overall continuum of learning for life.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a case study that identifies the practical issues and implications of employer engagement through course design, delivery and employee commitment in a higher education course delivered in the financial services sector.

Using a case study the paper draws on the course team (employer and university) experience of a higher education course delivered at a financial services institution over a two cohort period. Student application data and student feedback are used to identify the practical issues arising from course.

The paper emphasises the importance of understanding the business of the employer, bespoke delivery models and employee commitment for increasing employer participation in higher skills in the work place, particularly for employers not traditionally engaging with universities for course delivery at undergraduate level.

The paper explores issues for employers and universities for design, delivery and sustainability of higher skills in the work place.

The gender-gap reversal in education could have far-reaching consequences for marriage and family lives in the United States. This study seeks to address the following question: As women increasingly marry men with less education than they have themselves, is the traditional male breadwinner model in marriage challenged?

This study takes a life course approach to examine how educational assortative mating shapes trajectories of change in female breadwinning status over the course of marriage. It uses group-based trajectory models to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979.

The results reveal substantial movement by wives in and out of the primary breadwinner role across marital years and great heterogeneity in female breadwinning trajectories across couples. In addition, educational assortative mating plays a role in shaping female breadwinning trajectories: Compared with wives married to men whose educational levels equal or exceed their own, wives married to men with less education than themselves are more likely to have a continuously high probability of being primary earners and are also more likely to gradually or rapidly transition into primary earners if initially they are not.

This study examines couples’ breadwinning arrangements over an extended period of time and identifies qualitatively distinct patterns of change in female breadwinning that are not readily identifiable using ad hoc, ex ante classification rules. The findings suggest that future research on the economics of marriage and couple relations in families would benefit from a life course approach to conceptualizing couples’ dynamic divisions of breadwinning.

To understand how young men with disabilities react against overarching narratives of independence during the transition to adulthood in independent living and interdependent living arrangements with parents in order to address the gap between transition policy and real lived experience.

I use life history interviews and ethnographic “go-alongs” with nine men with mobility impairments to understand how they experience and make sense of independent living and interdependence during the transition to adulthood. Transcripts and field notes were analyzed using grounded theory methodology.

Data reveal diverging pathways participants took to interdependent living situation, rooting before transition, and returning during transition. These pathways are shaped by logics of residential decision-making: accessibility expectations and individual adaptability. Those who rooted before transition developed accessibility expectations that motivated them to remain living their parents’ homes while those who returned during transition relied on individual adaptability to overcome physical inaccessibility. Individual adaptability did not overcome inaccessibility – all returned to their parents’ homes. Pathways shape how each group of participants experienced and made sense of interdependent living arrangements and independent living. Those who rooted before transition found interdependence to be a route to increased independence, and did not consider independent living a marker of adulthood. Those who returned during transition found that the interdependence they experienced increased feelings of dependence.

Experiences and meanings emerging adults with disabilities have during the transition to adulthood reveal the complexity of interdependence and independent living. The pathways and the social forces shaping those pathways to interdependent living arrangements have implications for life course theory and disability policy.