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Youth unemployment: a review of the literature
Journal of Adolescence ,985, 8, x O ~ X ~
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ADRIAN FURNHAM ~ i s ~ p e r sets out to r e v ~ i the s t u d t ~ on youth in a .range of English s ~ a k i n g c o u n t r i ~ : Ame~ Britain. T h e s t u d ~ have been dividc~ into six sections: ~ychologieal . . adjustment~ ettributio~s and expectations, eduemtion about unemployment, job choice and ' " values, and job interview t ~ m m g . T h e paucity of gc.M t~ r t l y explains the lack of clear r e # i ~ t e d f i ~ i n g , s or coherent theories [or tNe c a u s e , correlates and c o e ~ q u e n ~ s of unemployment among young peopl, h i s is an area of relevance to soeia[ policy. F u ~ h e r m o r e , ~t was that vaNous facm~ such as individual differences, salient variabtes and previous work expe~ence ha V e b ~ n no#coted , many of the studies ~ e m to indicate the presence of a destructive vicious circle which young people e x p e N e n ~ :when nd .di~pp°intrnent'. .. .leading.. to
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT: A REVIEW Since the early x97os, when the problem became most acute, there have been a number of important studies on youth unemployment (Baxter, t975; Fowler, Littlewood and Madigan z976; Roberts~ Duggan and Noble, ~982; Maitt and Raffe, ~983- Many of these have looked at the same factor~health, self-esteem, causal explanation~that have been investigated in the adult population, but some have been quite specific to young people. The underlying causes of increased youth unemployment are of course manifold. They include demographic facto~ (change in the birth rate arid an extension of the school career), m i c ~ and macro economic changes (change in technology', different productivity agreements) and educational and " S of education). Changes in training factors (the relevance and appropnatenes youth unemployment are naturally associated with changes in adult unemployment but move with a ~eater amplitude. It has been calculated that if the unemployment rate for ma]~ rise by I per cent, the unem#oyment R~print r c q ~ s
should be direet©d to D r A~ Fu~ham, D e ~ m e n t of Psyeho!o~, Uni~rsity ,26 Bedfs~d ~ , L~ndonWCI. o14~z97~SS~o2oz~ ~ ~6 ~3~c~s ~ ~ $ ~he A ~ a t ~ ' ~ fo~ the Psychim~: ~tudy ~ A d ~ s ~{le~e
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A, F U R N H A M
rate for young males under 2o years (excluding school ]eavers) rises by r'7 per cent (MakCnam, z98o ). Compared with other groups, young people 't ' loos, hence, as the recession deepens change jobs more often or start W1thou and recruitment is cut, young people are among the most vulnerable.
Psycho
l adjustment
A number of studies have looked at the emotional, social and psychological adjustment of unempIoyed school l e a v e ~ Using a qu sttonnalre developed from the ideas of the neo-psyehoanalytie thinker, Erikson, Gurney (i98oa) l ~ k e d at over 4 ~ unemployed Australian school leavers. It -was hypothesized that having a job helps s e h ~ l leavers to clarify their perception of their identity, and not ~ i n" g ab t e to get work leads to a confused perception of self or no development due to a moratorium. The h y ~ t h ~ i s w ~ contirmed for females but not males. Furthermore, the un loyed m_aI~ showed a significant ~nift towards the mistrost p~le of the fi~t dimension of tmst~Jstmst, and the employed of both s e x ~ shifted si~ificantly on the indust~ subscale. He concludes " . . it seems reasonable to conclude that unemployment has the effect of inhibiting development in ~'" ing trauma as is sometimes popularly ~-':hool leavers, rather than irelict supposed" (p. zIz). Gurney (i98ob) a l ~ found that over a 4-month period after leaving school, self-esteem increased only for those young people who obtained work. More recently, Donovan. and Oddy ([98~) investigated the social and emotional development of a small, but carefully matched, group of employed and unemployed school leavers. They found that school leavers who were unemployed were more depressed and a ~ i o u s , had lower self-esteem and poorer subjective well-being, were tess well socially adjusted and showed a higher incidence of minor psychiatric morbidity than school leavers who had acquired jobs. They also found a si~ificant interaction between employment status and gender on the locus of control scale--unemployed males tend to be more external than employed males, whereas these differences-were minimal for females. The3¢ write: "Ce~ainly the apathy and hopelessness frequently associated with unemployment eould be linked to an increased tendency to attribute events to uncontrollable forces ~' (p. 24). Similarly, Feather (I98a) found both male and female, ~:oung, unemployed people had higher depre~ion scores, lower self-esteem and Protestant Work Ethic, and reported that good and bad ol:tcomes to everyday events were less impoaant to them compared with employed male subjects. He nOteS;
"Thee resu]t.s therefo~ indicate that both lower self~steem and le~ effort to find a job were a ated with i n c r ~ n g time out of work. They also ~-~ov¢that th active pursmt of emptoyment tended to be more frequent among t h e e ,.~ith
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
III
higher self-esteem, stron~r Protestant Ethic values and higher le~els of concern about positive and negative events (lower apathy). But frequency of job search was lower among those unemployed who reposed more depre~ive symptoms. These findings may irr~plya ~ of reciprocal determinism in which the state of continued unemployment has effee~ on the pesos, and the person, so modified by his or her experience, beans to behave in ways that alter the probability of finding a job" (p. 3~o)~ Stafford (i98~,) examined the i m p ~ t of the Youth Opportunities Pro.gra (d d to offer ~ 8 - y e a r - o l d s opportunities for training and work experience to increase employment prospects) on young people's employment pr cts and psy o~eal wall-being: She found a ifi improvement in emplo t prospects after participation in the scheme, which also acts as a buffer against any detrzme~ntat e ~ of unemployment. However, the beneficial effects.of the programme do not las¢ and the detrimen~l effects of unemployment return for t h e e ex,trainees w~o remain Other studies have noted the medical and psychological health costs of being unemployed. In Britain, Banks, C] , lackson, Kemp, Stafford and WalI (z98o) gave 647 recent school leavers the General Health Ques t"tonnaire---a sdf~administered screening test for detecting minor psychiatric disorders. There was a large si ~ if'tcant" difference betw~n these unemployed (3"78) and t h o ~ employed (I-27)," but there were no sign_ifieant sex difference. Further ana|ysis sho;~ved tha~ although the unemployed s-cored higher on the GHQ, this rdationship was moderated by their motivation to work, such that unemployed with a high motivation to work scored higher than those with lower work motivation. Similarly, in an American ~udy, Greenberger, Steinberg and ",/aux (:98~) compared the health and behaviouraI consequences of 16-x8-year-~d sChoolchlldren who had part.time jobs to those who had never worked. Although they recognized the potentially positive influence on adolescents, their work focused on the costs of job stress. Their study focused on sdfSreported frequency of psychological and physical health symptoms, school absence, and the u ~ of cigarettes, alcohol, ma~uana, and other things. The results indicated that the working youths (especially boys) repoaed fewer somatic symptoms than the non-:atorking youths, and that even boys who worked under stre~fuI job conditions report fewer somatic and psychological symptoms than boys who hold l~s stressful jobs. However, the results did show that exposu~ to job ~ress is related to ** alcohol and ma r tluana use for both boys and ~rls. The authors proposed four explanations for ~ e i r finding that work is a~ociated with fewer synEptoms in boys but more in garls, differenxiaI se eetton (hardier- b o ~ ~ e ILkely to take more ~ress ul jobs), d enti~ attfifon (hardier boys are akely to remain at
rl2 A, FORNHAM stressful jobs while those less sturdy are likely to leave); differential reporting about health (boys who work under stress are iess likely to report health problems than are girls); and sex differences in soctaazatto (boys are led to expect more stress than gt'r ls). Other studies have been concerned with the effect of youth unemployment as rapid labour turnover and ddiquency. For instance, Baxter (1975) studied chronic job changes in the early I97os. tob cha tended to be less intelligent, more neurotic, from poorer s, and le~ socially and occupationally skilled than their counte~arts who did not change jobs so ra . or, Raffe (I983)~ in a study of em#oyment in Iity in ~ a n g people, found that aIth in ility was generated more by ~ c u p a t i o n ~ than persona| faeto~ (unstable jobs not unstable ~,orkers), their eh of finding new empl e d on onal than on their ~ r l i e r oce onal experience, Similarly, n (198:) found that early career unem L-~ not a critical in ret economic th (relative to edu ba und and job experience), but have n ire job attitudinal consequences. "Young males who are early emrants in the labour and who spend the of their work in part-time employment do as well economically, and better oecupat ly, in their later experience than do full-time employed MiUham, Bullock m:d Hosie (z978), in a s t u ~ of over a :ooo boys in approved schods, found that employment experiences were a crucial factor in promoting economic and social well-being. Though the authors ,were carehfl not to draw casual links between unemployment and delinquency, they did find that regular work did build up offending boys" confidence, changed their job aspirations, enhanced their self-perceptions and remotirated their interest in numeracy and literacy. The problem with nearly all the studies on youth unemployment and psychological adjustment is that one cannot infer cause--only correlation. " I adjustment leads to a That is, it is quite possible that poor psycholo~ca young person being unemployed, rather than the other way around. The only study that attempted a longitudinal analysis of the problem, however, yielded ambiguous results. Wart, Jackson and Banks (i982) inte~iewed two cohorts of recent school leavers over a z-year period and found that measures of psychological stress and self-esteem were found to be corr with the duration of unempl for young men. In one coho~ ~ women, the young e appeared to be better ~ u s t e d the they -were un d, apparendy because of their reduced itment to the labour Mong a per t in y rs. The authors offer two tible ex s for fi'mir puzzling findin e a~odation n eing of pl differ
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UNEMPLOYMENT
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between age ~ o u p s (older people with more commitrnentz may experience greater distress) and, secondly, that longer periods of unemployment than those studied in this study (over a year) lead to distress. Similarly, B a n ~ and Jackson (x 982) interviewed two age c~horts of young people up to z½ years after leaving school to investigate the association between unemployment and ~sk of minor psychiatric mo~idity. They found a positive relationship b en unemploymem and morbidity after controlling for s~,-ethnic ~ o u p and educ:ational qualifications. Fu~her lon~tudinal analyses that the experience of unemp ent was more likely to create ~ I ~ym , rather than the re-ve~-e. More y, Jackson, St rd, Banks and Wart (!983) studied :Iongitndinally two c~horts of young people in the first 3 yea~ of r ng lives. They found, as predicted, that psycho|o~eal dist is higher for the unemp|oyed than for the employed, and that eha in eat status lead to ch in d ss score. Fur , this relati is moderated by ~ne person's commitment to he itted suffer more f ~ m the experience of unem eat. Attribution a n d ex¢.ectation about e
ent a n d u
~t
Although there have been some studies of adult explanations of unemployment (Furnham, x98~a, I983), considerably less work has gone into establishing y o u n g ~ o p l e ' s beliefs about, and actual attempts at, getting a job. Feather and Davenport (z98~) tested their ~peetancy valence theory on young pe O ple.* a person's actions are seen to be ~lated to the expectations that a person holds a n d to the subjective values of the outcomes that might occur following the action. They found, as predicted, that higher motivated, more depressed, unemployed youths blamed stable ~ t e r n a l factors for unemployment and rated the attractiveness of work more highly than less depressed youths. Although incompatible w ith learned helplessness theory, the results supported their theory which assumes that positive motivation to seek employment is identical to the multiplicative combination of expectancy of success in g~tting a job a n d the perceived net attractiveness of uemployment. They note: "One might assume that work will have stronger positive valence for individuals with strong Protestant ethic values than for those peo#e for whom these values are weaker. If this a~umption is valid, then it follo.-vsthat people with a strong Protestant ethic value will be more pe~istent in tFmire to get a job and that the)" will suffer n~re ire ts if they fail to ob~in emp t" (p. 337)Gurney (x98i) in examned the attributions for the causes of unemployment in both employed and u n c o l o r e d ps of school leavers.
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A. FURNHAM
in a first study he attempted to discover, among a population of Australian school leavers, whether the unemployed differed in ,ttaeir attributions of employment from t h o ~ who succeeded in getting work and, secondly, whether any differences were ant ant to, or consequent upon, unemployment. Subjects were asked to ascribe the abiiity to get work either to internal or ex:ternal faeto~ to the job seeker, and to fill out a simple eight-item scale devised by the author. He found that ,~nempl males att~buted both getting and not getting significantly more to external as has been found previously-, but there were no di c ~ in the re.aM groups. Gurney ed that ~ne lack of differences among~the ate may be due to their lesser defensi need to blame external s for b unemployed. In a s d lon~ ;uainal study~ studems were given a xz-item attribution-forgetting-jobs questionnaire prior to l ~ v i n g school and then approxima 4 th~ | He z that: "The unet may believe ss to t ~ circum~ances of es but the fact flaat they are without work, ~hereas ~ther~ are no~ and that they ~ , may lead them eventually to see v~ ~ le for their c-ondition (internal attribution) with consequent said arid ~lf-derogation" (p. 89). The results showed that prior to leaving school the groups did not differ, yet later it was not the unemployed who ehanged their attributions, but the employed who shifted sign~icantly toward a more internal set of causal ascriptions. Overall, Gurney (x98x) ~emed unable to account for his and unexpected " tm esting perhaps that sub" counter-mtmttve " '" "' d l ngs, jects of this age have their self-esteem based on numerous other things such as parental evaluation and peer groups approval, rather than exclusively on work which is more often the case with adults. In a rather different study, Dayton (t98r) looked at the way in which young people looked for a job. He set out to determine -what job-seeking approaches were being used by young p ~ p l e and what factors they found positive and useful (aids) and what negative and worthless (barriers) in a job search. Using a population oI 250 young Americans, Dayton found they regarded their own positive personal attributes (personality, flexibility, aca emlc ab~hty) as the most i m p o ~ t aids in their job, and external factors (labour unions, welfare and unemployment insu~aee, government training programme) ~ least t* m o o ~ a nt . Employment success and satisfaction was correlated with ~-eful analysis of which job suited t h ~ best, the assemblauee of a pla ent file, letters of reeommendat i on and a c.v., combined with stenee in the job seraph. Research within the ework of attribution ~ would, ever, Iead
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UNEMPLOYMENT
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one to make a number of predictions about school childrens' expectations and * e beliefs about getting a job (Furnham, ~98za, b, I983). For mstanc, people more prone to unemployment, and the unemployed themselves, tend to ma~ke more external attributions for the causes of unemployment, in contrast to those in jobs and unlikely to become unemployed. Furthermore, studies .... O ns are to some extent protective of have shown that external attnbut3 self-esteem in the context of achievement (Ham.e~v and Iekes, I978). Hence, Furnham (~984)predlct~ that females more than males and working-class s u b j ~ t s more thafi middle-c/ass subject r whom unemployment is statistically more probable-~-will be prone to make more external attributions about getting a job. Further, it was s u b . t e d that these attributions will also refl in fine number and type of job-search st ~ adopted by young " i ng p ~ p t e and the barriers and aids that they consider ~perate ia job-hunt success. In this study, Furnham set out to e~xa~ne sex and class dl.fferences in 240 British schoN le~vers" attributions t unemployment, the r n ~ t and " least useful job-search s t i t c h e" s , and which ~hool course t h ~ belieyed most and least useful in getting a job. The r~uits of the four different-pa~s of this study s u r e s t that, overall, attributions about getting a job are frequently internal (i.e. to personal attributes or abilities) rather than envi~nmental or ~cietal factors. Confidence, perseverance and qualifications were all considered to be primary- facto~ responsible for success in finding employment, yet this is moderated by the belief that jobs are not currently available (a fact which is attributed to the government). Yet failure to get a job ~as rarely attributed to the pe~onal short-comings of the job-seeker himself. Thus, these results tend to suppea the well established, attributional finding that success is attributed to internal faeto~ and failure to external factors. Where there were significant sex differences, it was found that females were more external in their attributions than males, Th~s conflicts with Gurney (I98i), who found that unemployed males were more external in their attributions about employment than employed males, but that the.~ were no differences between employed and unemployed fem~ the extensive locus of control literature has s h ~ n that where: exist in generalized locus of control beliefs, females are more ex~t'nal than males. Similarly, cla~ differences tended to show that wo: iects tend to place more emphasis on structural or e:,~ternaI am, z 9 8 ~ ). Again this is to be expected and in actor e with pre v"lous literature on the topic (Fumham and Gumer, I984). The results on the aids and barriers findings of Dayton (x98r), who f o ~ d that hhe su ts saw t] onal attribut~ as the ~eatest rods and external factors as dn a&ances. Simihrly, ng s t r a t e g y , class and sex diffe s sho that the m iddie e l ~
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A, F U R N H A M
to rate all job-hunting strategies as more useful thart the working ~nd girls showed less faith in following up specific I~Ob choices than boys. T h e subjects all stressed the importance of s u m m e r ,and a~ter-schoo| work for exper~,ence, but tended to rely on onal rather than direct approaches to employers. It would be interesting to t beliefs with those of foyers, who m~y have quite difLerent bel~fs cone whiC~ fa m ~ . e ,an applicant The in the u s e f u l n e ~ of A-level cou rev that ~ t h males and fe bell science e o u ~ s (and the 1 in ng a ~ob, alth ales tended to opt for arts cou and mMes for science at .A_-level. F e m a t ~ air3 bel that arts courses useful than seierme c , so providing a r ~ i ization for die choice, ever, a study such as ttfi.s w~s e to det ne ales arts subiects a,ng~t6hen felt it ~ to justify their ct~iee, or whether they lly believed thenl to be most useful per se arid hence selected them rdi . It is of course also possible that when candidates a pa~ieular they do so for many reasons, only one Of "~hich is its Iness for ing a iob. Further, the believed importance of science courses may reflect recent government empl-msis and finding t o ~ r d s the "hard" sciences, rather than the arts or social sciences. T h e s e results also indicate that attribmiorvs are to some extent a function of the e x p i r a t i o n of work,
Education about unemployment B e e a u ~ it has become so widespread, various researchers have arzued for some sort of education about the problenas and p r o s p e r s of unemployment. Some (Stirling, x982 ) have gone ~ far as to s u r e s t that we need to prepare school leave~ for unemployment, arg~aHg that because as many as one-third of school leavers in B f t a i n (in i 9 8 z ~ 3 ) may experience unenaployment they need to know what to anticipate and how to cope. F u ~ h e r m o r e , high levels of youth u n e m p l o y m e n t have produced a questioning of, and disenchantment with, the whole education (Ha ayes, x98x ). Darey (x978) argued that young people need to be educated in all aspects of job-sharing and to ~ enc to have a new definition of work, to include not only paid e m n-lent but a variety of other ties. T o this end he believes a educa p me should ve such topics as tile m~hanic,s of ~1I fits, the a c q u ~ t i o n of jobskSlls, the exgmrience of u n e m p t ent, I re and munity roles, and the pol~ics of the to work. V,~atts (i978) a I ~ co ered dhe icationz of sehool-leaver unemplo~.~ent for C ~ e e r s Education in ~ h o o l s . H e a r ~ a ~ that ~ ed have not t the em of ent ~ c a u ~ do not t to ~ c k l e it ;
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT ~x7 they are aveare of i~ highly political and emotional overtones; it might affect deleteriously the work ethic ,xfithin and outside the school; and because the teachers feel instinctively hostile to the c o n e ~ t o~ preparation for unemployment. A number of po~ible curricular objectives are listed, including equipping children with employability, survival and leisure skills. Four alternative aims are d e s c r i e d , dependifi~ whether one is focussing on change in society (to help students see unemployment as a phe on by ! and political measures); ge in the individual (to rw~ximize is" of finding ningfuI employment); quo in the y (to rein students' motivation to work); and status in the indivJduM (to make stu of the possibility of une oy and how to best with it). Much of the ca re~ and es are dependent on w er one ~ l i e v ~ ployment to be volu (ave:sion of the wiil to )~ cycl of on rand ex on) or ural (a major change in the rel ip ~m and labour). These solutions may include a d r inca of the , job creation schem~, etc. Careers edu is seen as the education of central life in and personal and develo m~ rather ihe matching of people to (nonnt) jobs. As a practical re, Lave be and Fleming (z98i) attempted to identify (by using attitude measures) those schoolchildren at risk of longer periods of une4mp|oyrnem and hence in particular need of support, information and skills. Although they found that their measures did ~:ot predict which pupils would take longest to find jobs, they believed all pupils should be prepared for unemployment. Their results suggested that employers have little confidence in what teachers report conceding expected examination results, attendance records or attitudes to school, authority or work when selecting among young applicants. Fleming and Lavercombe (x98~), in a study of 29 professionals working with young people, found that the professionals varied ~nsiderably in their topics and approaches. The so~ of topics discussed by the professionals.m" " schools ,acre: whether work itself is the major basis of self-respect and how the unemployed can compensate; how to spend one's leisure/free time; the mechanics of claiming supplementa~ benefit; and possibilities of continuing education and the pMitics of unemployment. In talking with unem#oyed school leavers after school, °the prof~sional bel their primary role was giving support while being as honest as possible. They also believed that their activities h d p e d boredom and anxiety, m h d p t get a job, and to facilitate personal . professional who believed that there -wasa chance of a h's return to w o ~ zed job ing and -kee#ng s~lls, while t h o ~ more istic a t the future of work concen on ng val skills suitable for the u . This
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A, F U R N H A M
seemed a basic division among the professionals, some of whom believed their job was primarily to help young people get a I~O b, and others who believed it was to help young people cope and amuse themselves because they ~ never had a job. Not surprtsmgly, many of the p r ofesstonals seemed depressed and exhausted by a job that confronted so starkly the discrepancy between young people's aspirations and the lack of jobs available. ' r ed the future for the whole of More recently, Coffie!d (i 984) has conslde education in a world without lobs. He suggests that young people are learnt g to live with unemployment as a result of mo V'mg in and out of ~ohs and governmem schemes. Furthermore, he notes how the education system and particular schools should be wiging to adapt their curriculum for new circumstances. He proposed a new organization formed by schools, universities and coil of education that would translate research findings " i on s rapid and into industrial terms and vice versa; g l"ve educational "msutut reliable feedback on the general and specific s~l|s needed by young workers at the l:m#nning of their ca~ers; and use latest r e . a r c h findings to update educational curricula. T h u s "a return for a steady stream of articulate, literate and numerate young workers and manage~ with the appropriate skills, local industry would pay to keep both the Unive~ity and local schools in the vangttard of progress" (p. 4x). Although somewhat optimistic, this visionary but practical ap appears to be n e c e ~ a ~ to help prepare young people for the future.
Job dmice and ~ r k expeffence in the young High rates of unemployment naturally affect school !eavers' perceptions, expectations and experiences of employment. Although it has often been suggested that modern youth are reluctant to accept menial and non-menial employment, have lost the willingness to work, and are no longer believers in the Protestant Work Ethic, studies have shown this not to be the ease (Boru% x982). One example of young people's eagerness to work is the number of part-time jobs that they have. There has been a general ~sumption that working teaches young people "responsibility", fosters "social cooperation" and helps in the attainment of new and important job skills, thou~-~ there is not a great deal of hard evidence in support of this (Rugguro and Steinberg, As Sta and Jackson (t98I) have pointed out, the literature on the transition from se to work has derived from two approac he psycho eal, which individual choice in , and the al, which sees entry to work as a of aI tion.
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
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A case study of z4 young people's work aspl"rat ions and job-seeking in an area of high unemployment showed that it ~s through the job-search process that young people learn about the accessibility of jobs when these influence [ r rant in "the their asplmt~ons. Because lamlJ i es and friends are so ~mpo job-search process, young people from unemployed or unsupportive families are most at risk. This suggests the importance of the family in the choice of job, the ability to get a job, and the coping strategies used while unemployed. However, search-for-work strategies are in pa~ a consequence of opportunities and experience~ Education, age and race might act in favour or against young people getting work, in a study of immigrant school leavers' search for work, Fowler et aL (z976) found a l a ~ e r propo~ion of native * S BHtons had ae to, and entered~ the "prima D"labour-market" through job with formal training, retativdy g ~ d pay and promotion prospects than did i m m i ~ a n t s who were relegated to the secop.da~ m~rket. They found that explanations in t e ~ s of unrealistic aspi~tions or inadequate job-hunting strat~ies are satisfactory in only a minority of cases, while discr{mination seemed the most obvious explanation. .
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Values
School leavers develop aspirations about the types of jobs that they would like. These aspirations or work v a l u e s ~ a n and do affect their job satisfaction and personal adjustment. Where there is a large discrepancy in such t h i n ~ as s~lt utilization, mfluene and job variety there l~ hkely to be a high incidence of job dissatisfaction. Various studies have shown that the unemployed feel pro~essively less able to use their abilities and influence their environment in order to obtain desired outcomes. Dowling and O t Bn" e n (I98;) predicted that school leavers who had experienced a s ~ l t l c a n t period of unemployment would lower their desired ....... ti on influences and variety in employment. They levels of sktli-utmza administered a questionnaire to 652 Australian school leavers and then again a year later when ~ m e were employed, some unemployed and some in further education. They found that the employed showed a significant increase in their desire for skill utilization but no change in desired influence and variety, while the students showed ar~ increase in all these work values. Contraw to their pre lction, there was no significant change in the work values of those unemployed. T h e e results are explained in terms of methodo|~ical errors or msulzlc~en attention to individual di nces. Rump (z983) has argued that in the study of unernpk~ed and employed young people one needs to
t;Zo
A. FORNHAM "disting~Jish those whose unemployment has been tempered by eartier employment from those Who have never been in work; those studying by reason of preference from those studying only by reason of failure to obtain employment; and those in employment who have been so for most of their post-school experience from those currently working who have neve~hdcss been unemployed for a long period prior to e:Dtainingwork".
Dowling and O'Brien (r983) reanatysed their data in line with Rump's su~estions, but found no significant differences. Studies on adults have, however, shown a chafige in values as a consequence of unemployment.
Job interv
trmning
One ~nsequence of mass youth has a of attention on the job i w ~ d the skilis required in h. people be aware of the that be e ot skill deficits on the p a n of both inter¢iewers rand i n t e ~ i e w ~ s , p ially able candid were getting rej because of r social per nce in the job inter~ew. Subsequemly, there has been a deal of t detailed on the verbal and non-verbal s~ills required to be successful in a job interview setting (Hollandswo~h, Ot i and Dressel, x977: er and Sushelsky, z978; Hol|andsworth, K skis, Stevens and D ~ s d , ~-979)- Hood, Lindsay and Brooks (I98z) allocated school leavers to either an inte~iewtraining or discu~ion control ~ o u p . The interview-trainlng group received a combination of modelling coaching, role play, feedback and discussion to train both verbal and non-verbal interview skills. Later, the school leavers were assessed using video-taped, role-played interviews which were made at the beginning and the end of each ironing phase. The trained group showed significant improvements on global, as well ~ specific, ratings; quesdon asking and answering, fidgeting, smiling, eye contact, gesture, posture and interest compared to the control group. The researche~ all demonstrated the generalization and maintenance of these treatment effects over time. in conclusion they noted: "Studies that have been concerned -~th interview training for various populations of adot~eents indicated that such training may have a worthvKhile contribution to make in preparing them for seeking employment. In view of the cu~ent employment situation, performance in the inter¢i~ is more critical than ever before ~nd interview training may fulfil a preventive /unetion in inter~Jpting the process of failure in inter,.,iew, tack of ~o~k ~ r i e n e e , arm fu~her faitu~ in int~r¢iew, before: it becomes entrenched and leads to other ~ychologqcal p~blems" (p. 59z). Heimbe~, Cunningham, Stanley and B l a e e n ~
( x ~ z ) conducted a
YOUTH
UNEMPI,OYMENT
I21
similar study in America which aimed to investi~te the effect of social skills training to prepare unemployed youth for the lob interview. Firstly they conducted a series of detailed interviews with unemployed youths, their employment counsellors and potential employers to obtain information about the appropriate "target" behaviours in a job ime~.iew. Subjects were then given a trial run in order to determinate how much training they needed. The performance of the t~ining group .aas compared to two groups of controlled s u b j e c t ~ n e to& played the interviewee in an actual ~ob inte~iew. A|though this study did have some ltmt attons (only quasi-randomization of subjects to conditions), ~' t w a s established that subjects r e ~ l"Vmg ° social skills training surpassed control subjocts on a h u m o r of verbal paralinguistie and other measures employed in the ~ l e play assessment a n d ceeerail performance as rated by an independent set of observe~. F u ~ h e ~ o ~ , ro|e-play ratings at the post.testing s~sion were found to moderately proSict t ~ t i n ~ by employers in the actual inte~iew. Ahhough this interview training for young people is probahly more an ou th of social skills training validation than a response to youth unemployment, it clearly will be of considerable use to prospective job
Research on youth unemployment is scattered :~.Joss a wide number of disciplines: economies, education, psychology (clinical, educational, occupational, social) and socio|o~. Neve~heless it can be divided roughly into two areas: those studies concerned with the cause and consequences of youth unemployment, and those studies concerned vdth preparing or training young people for unemployment and emptoymem respectively. As in nearly e v e q area of social science research, the results are equivocal; nevertheless, various themes en~aerge. For instance, studies on the psychological consequences of unemployment tend to point in'the same direction-namely that unemploymem c a u l s stress, a lowering of self-esteem and a change in expectations. Similarly the work on attributions and expectations has revealed some consistent findings. Taken together, the literature implies a vicious circle for the unemployed school tearer. If, for any reason, the young people are unable to find a iob, he or site m loose stir-esteem, l:~ecome tally ill and t change their tat ions of getting a job. Lowered job expect will no doubt ~ j rch ~ which in turn lower the probability of ng a job, so e o n f i ~ i n g the belief. Hence a I[it|ing ~ y or reel a! d e f e a t i s m ( er~ ~98z) may account for the despair of ~ m e I e~.
xx¢
A, FURNHAM
T h e literature on education and t m in m ~ g is clearer and m o ~ optimistic. Older educational topics and values are being challenged, though there remains some disagreement about the precise direction ia ~which we should move. On the other hand, there ~s close agreement and a moderate degree of success in the training of young people for job i m e ~ i e w s . Although research in t h ~ area is comparatively , difficult and expensive, tl-fis is no excuse for poor studies. O n e reason for the equivocal ambiguous and ed findi is clearly met . Certain~ indivi differences need to be taken more into account. T h e r e are three categories of individual differences which need to be controtIed for an in this . Fi , there are I dif in pets se (e.g. wod~ ethic), etc. of young peoFde and any unempJ nt, or employ , ency. y, there are ic differences in sex, nationM g~oup, etc. ~Vhich condition any young person's world , expectations, etc. Thirdly, there are work_ rience differermes in that some young people have h and , expedenee, and no fence. Each ~ d all of fltese va les haw: exa in one or other of the above studies. T h e problem has been that in concemrating on one variable others have been ignored or, worse still, confounded. T h e reactions of young people to u n e m p l o y m e n t seem sufficiently different to those of adults, and are clearly of utmost importance in their adjustment to the adult world, to merit good research.
REFERENCES Banks, M. and Jackson, P. (t98~). Unemployment ~ d 6sk of minor psychiatric disorder in young people: cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence. PsychologicatMedicine. 12, 789-798. Banks, M., C|egg, C., Jackson, P., Kemp, N , St~ford, E. andW~l~ T. (198o). The use of the Gencrat Health Questionnaire as an indicator of menta! health in occupational studies. J o u ~ a t qf Occupational P~c 53, X87~X94. Baxter, J. (x975). The chronic job changer: a study of youth unemployment. Social and Economic t ,9, t84-2o6. Bogus, M. (198z), WilIingn~ to work among youEri,ffoumal of Human Resources, ~ , Darcy, J. (x978). Education about unemployment: a reflective element, z~of Education, 4r ~ 4. Dayton. C. (i98~). The young person\s iob search: insights from a sttady, of Counseling ~ , 321-333. Do A. and , M. (I98z). I cts of tan era: investigation into the emotior,a! and social ad]uustmemof ~ o I t ~ v e ~ . J o u r ~ t o f 5, z5-3o.
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tz3
Dowling, P. and O'Brien, G. (x98x). The effects of employment, unemployment and further education upon the work values of $ch~t leavers. Australian flour-hal of Psychology, 33, ~85-195, DowIing, P, and O'Brien, G. (~983)~ The woE~t values of ~nemployed and employed youth: a reply to Rump~ Australian Journal C togy, 35, 9~-96. Fea'rher, N. (~98z). Unemplo: corrdates: astudy of depressive symptoms self-esteem, ttrib~tional style and apathy. A n JoumaI of 34, 3o9-3z3 , Feather, N. ~and Davenport~ P. (~#~). Unemp|oyment and depressive effect: a 41, 422-436. F/eming, D. and Lavercombe, S. (I982). Talki~ about unemployment with se-hooll~vers. Bfftis~hf[ou~tat ,of Gu ce and Cbumelli~g, 10, zz-33. Fowler, B., Littlewe~, B~ and Mzdigan, R. (1976). ! m m i ~ n t school-tearers and the search for work. I8, 336-35 ~. Furnham, A. (I ). Explanations for unemplo~,'~nt in Britain. European ffour~al ~" l P~,2: , 1Z~ 335--35z. Furnham, A. (tg82b). The Protestant work ethic and attitud~ towards unemployment. Journal q[ Occupati~naLPsycho ,55, z77-z86. Furnham, .~. (x983). Attitud~ to the unemployed ~cei~ng social security. I-luman Relatio~i~, 36, I35--I5o. Fu rnham, A. (t 984)- G ettir~ a job: school-tearers perceptions of employment prospects. British journal of Ea~cattonal Psychology, 54, 293-3o5. Furnham, A. and Gunter, B. (x984). Just world briefs and attitudes towards the poor. British .7ou~!at of Social Psychology, ~ , ~65~69. Greenberger, E., Steilaer, L. and Vaux, A. (~98a). Adolescents who work: health and behavioural consequences ~ job ~ress. Developmental Psychology, 17, 69x-7o 3. Gurney, R. (a98oa).'The effects-of unemptoymem on the psyehosoeial development of scho~l-leavers. Journal of Occ@ational Psycholo~,, 53, 2os-zx 3, Gurney,~R. (t98ob), Does unemployment affect the self-esteem of zchoot-teavers. Australian ffournal of Psychology, 32, xTS-I8Z. Gurney, R. (x 98x' nempioyment and making attribtttions about '~ the canoes of f Vacationol Behavi.our, 18, 79--9x. Hargreaves, D. (x98t). Unemployment, leisu~ and education. Oxford Review of Harvey, J., Ickes, W. and Kidd, R, (I975) (Eds), New Dl~ctlons mAttrzbu.onResea vh. Vol z. H i l l ~ e , New Je~ey: ~lbaum Press. Heimberg, R., Cunningham, J., Stanley, J. and Blaeenberg, R. (~98~). S~ial skills training to prepare unemployed youth for the job intec,,iew. Bef~aviourModication, 6, z9~32~. Hotlandsworth, J., Gt~egki, R. and Drexel, M. (x978)~ Use of social-skills training in the treatment of extreme anxiety and deficient verbaI skills in the ]ob-inter¢iew setting..Toumal of Applied Behavionr Analysis, 11~ 25~269. Hollandsworth, J., Kazmlskis, R., Ste~,ens, J. and Drexel, M , (t979). Relative contrihvtions of verb~ a~ieulative, and non-verbal communication to employment decisions in the lob interview setting. Pe~onnd Psycholog3~ 32, 359--367. H o ~ , E., Lind~y, W. and Bro-~ks, N. (198z). Inter,dew traiaio~ with adot~cence. v~our rch and ~ e 20, 58x-59z.
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A. FURNHAM
jackson, P., Stafford, E., Banks, M. and Wart, P. (~983)- Unemployment and psychological dlstre~ in young people: the moderating role of employment commitment. Jou~al of oto~, ~ , 525-535. 9, 36-¢5 " Main, B, and Raffe, D, (x983), The transition from sehooI to work in a95o18i: a dynamic account, British Reseamh ~burnal, 9, 57-70~ Makeham, P. (I98o). t: ~ inaffon of no2 on Youth ent Using National Sta Department of Employment. MilIham, S~, Bullock, R, and Ho~c, K,. (i978), Juvenile unemployment: a concept due for re-cycling?floured" of A 1~ I t-~ 4, Raelin, 1. ( t ~ i ) . A compara6ve ~ud'y of later ,~rk experience among ful~-time~ part-time, and male youth, fro ~[ M ~havi~urs, 19, 3xS-327 . Raffe, D. (~983). Empl ku3tabflity among 1 ual of nee and t l , 2I-3 4. Roberts, K., D , J. and Noble, M. (198z). Oat-of~ youth in high un~_rnp a ~ a s : ~n ricat n. of rice and Ru
, M. and Steinberg, L. (~98I). The empirical study of teenage work.Journal of VocationalBeh r, 19r t63-I74, Rump, E. (2983). A comment on Dw,~,lingand O'Brien's"Em and "Unemployed" n Austral~,n ffouma! ~ 35~ Sta E. (I98z). The impa uth mine on young people's em#oyment prospects and psychological well-being. British Journal of Guidance and Counse 10~ x2-~z. Stafford, E. and lacl,.son, P. (x98~). Job choice or iob allocation? Work aspirations and job seeking in an area of high unemployment. Urtpubiisbed. Stlr|ing, A. (I982). Preparing school leaver~ for unemploymem. Bulletin of tl',e British P~ychologicat S ~ e t y , 35, ~ I - 4 ~ , Tessler, R. and Bushe|sky, L. (i978). Eff~ts of eye contact and social status on the perception of a job applicant in an employment inte~iewing situation. Journal of VocationatBehaviour, 13, 338,347° Wart, P., Jackson, P. and Banl,~, M. (198z). Duration o[ unemployment and psychological well-being in young men and women, Current Psyeholo~calResearch, 2, 2o7-z~ 4, Watts, A. (1978). The implications of sehool-leavers: unemployment for careers education in schools, journal of Cumculum Studies, 3, ~33-~5 o.
a
r e v ie ~ "
of the
ADRIAN FURNHAM ~ i s ~ p e r sets out to r e v ~ i the s t u d t ~ on youth in a .range of English s ~ a k i n g c o u n t r i ~ : Ame~ Britain. T h e s t u d ~ have been dividc~ into six sections: ~ychologieal . . adjustment~ ettributio~s and expectations, eduemtion about unemployment, job choice and ' " values, and job interview t ~ m m g . T h e paucity of gc.M t~ r t l y explains the lack of clear r e # i ~ t e d f i ~ i n g , s or coherent theories [or tNe c a u s e , correlates and c o e ~ q u e n ~ s of unemployment among young peopl, h i s is an area of relevance to soeia[ policy. F u ~ h e r m o r e , ~t was that vaNous facm~ such as individual differences, salient variabtes and previous work expe~ence ha V e b ~ n no#coted , many of the studies ~ e m to indicate the presence of a destructive vicious circle which young people e x p e N e n ~ :when nd .di~pp°intrnent'. .. .leading.. to
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT: A REVIEW Since the early x97os, when the problem became most acute, there have been a number of important studies on youth unemployment (Baxter, t975; Fowler, Littlewood and Madigan z976; Roberts~ Duggan and Noble, ~982; Maitt and Raffe, ~983- Many of these have looked at the same factor~health, self-esteem, causal explanation~that have been investigated in the adult population, but some have been quite specific to young people. The underlying causes of increased youth unemployment are of course manifold. They include demographic facto~ (change in the birth rate arid an extension of the school career), m i c ~ and macro economic changes (change in technology', different productivity agreements) and educational and " S of education). Changes in training factors (the relevance and appropnatenes youth unemployment are naturally associated with changes in adult unemployment but move with a ~eater amplitude. It has been calculated that if the unemployment rate for ma]~ rise by I per cent, the unem#oyment R~print r c q ~ s
should be direet©d to D r A~ Fu~ham, D e ~ m e n t of Psyeho!o~, Uni~rsity ,26 Bedfs~d ~ , L~ndonWCI. o14~z97~SS~o2oz~ ~ ~6 ~3~c~s ~ ~ $ ~he A ~ a t ~ ' ~ fo~ the Psychim~: ~tudy ~ A d ~ s ~{le~e
rio
A, F U R N H A M
rate for young males under 2o years (excluding school ]eavers) rises by r'7 per cent (MakCnam, z98o ). Compared with other groups, young people 't ' loos, hence, as the recession deepens change jobs more often or start W1thou and recruitment is cut, young people are among the most vulnerable.
Psycho
l adjustment
A number of studies have looked at the emotional, social and psychological adjustment of unempIoyed school l e a v e ~ Using a qu sttonnalre developed from the ideas of the neo-psyehoanalytie thinker, Erikson, Gurney (i98oa) l ~ k e d at over 4 ~ unemployed Australian school leavers. It -was hypothesized that having a job helps s e h ~ l leavers to clarify their perception of their identity, and not ~ i n" g ab t e to get work leads to a confused perception of self or no development due to a moratorium. The h y ~ t h ~ i s w ~ contirmed for females but not males. Furthermore, the un loyed m_aI~ showed a significant ~nift towards the mistrost p~le of the fi~t dimension of tmst~Jstmst, and the employed of both s e x ~ shifted si~ificantly on the indust~ subscale. He concludes " . . it seems reasonable to conclude that unemployment has the effect of inhibiting development in ~'" ing trauma as is sometimes popularly ~-':hool leavers, rather than irelict supposed" (p. zIz). Gurney (i98ob) a l ~ found that over a 4-month period after leaving school, self-esteem increased only for those young people who obtained work. More recently, Donovan. and Oddy ([98~) investigated the social and emotional development of a small, but carefully matched, group of employed and unemployed school leavers. They found that school leavers who were unemployed were more depressed and a ~ i o u s , had lower self-esteem and poorer subjective well-being, were tess well socially adjusted and showed a higher incidence of minor psychiatric morbidity than school leavers who had acquired jobs. They also found a si~ificant interaction between employment status and gender on the locus of control scale--unemployed males tend to be more external than employed males, whereas these differences-were minimal for females. The3¢ write: "Ce~ainly the apathy and hopelessness frequently associated with unemployment eould be linked to an increased tendency to attribute events to uncontrollable forces ~' (p. 24). Similarly, Feather (I98a) found both male and female, ~:oung, unemployed people had higher depre~ion scores, lower self-esteem and Protestant Work Ethic, and reported that good and bad ol:tcomes to everyday events were less impoaant to them compared with employed male subjects. He nOteS;
"Thee resu]t.s therefo~ indicate that both lower self~steem and le~ effort to find a job were a ated with i n c r ~ n g time out of work. They also ~-~ov¢that th active pursmt of emptoyment tended to be more frequent among t h e e ,.~ith
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
III
higher self-esteem, stron~r Protestant Ethic values and higher le~els of concern about positive and negative events (lower apathy). But frequency of job search was lower among those unemployed who reposed more depre~ive symptoms. These findings may irr~plya ~ of reciprocal determinism in which the state of continued unemployment has effee~ on the pesos, and the person, so modified by his or her experience, beans to behave in ways that alter the probability of finding a job" (p. 3~o)~ Stafford (i98~,) examined the i m p ~ t of the Youth Opportunities Pro.gra (d d to offer ~ 8 - y e a r - o l d s opportunities for training and work experience to increase employment prospects) on young people's employment pr cts and psy o~eal wall-being: She found a ifi improvement in emplo t prospects after participation in the scheme, which also acts as a buffer against any detrzme~ntat e ~ of unemployment. However, the beneficial effects.of the programme do not las¢ and the detrimen~l effects of unemployment return for t h e e ex,trainees w~o remain Other studies have noted the medical and psychological health costs of being unemployed. In Britain, Banks, C] , lackson, Kemp, Stafford and WalI (z98o) gave 647 recent school leavers the General Health Ques t"tonnaire---a sdf~administered screening test for detecting minor psychiatric disorders. There was a large si ~ if'tcant" difference betw~n these unemployed (3"78) and t h o ~ employed (I-27)," but there were no sign_ifieant sex difference. Further ana|ysis sho;~ved tha~ although the unemployed s-cored higher on the GHQ, this rdationship was moderated by their motivation to work, such that unemployed with a high motivation to work scored higher than those with lower work motivation. Similarly, in an American ~udy, Greenberger, Steinberg and ",/aux (:98~) compared the health and behaviouraI consequences of 16-x8-year-~d sChoolchlldren who had part.time jobs to those who had never worked. Although they recognized the potentially positive influence on adolescents, their work focused on the costs of job stress. Their study focused on sdfSreported frequency of psychological and physical health symptoms, school absence, and the u ~ of cigarettes, alcohol, ma~uana, and other things. The results indicated that the working youths (especially boys) repoaed fewer somatic symptoms than the non-:atorking youths, and that even boys who worked under stre~fuI job conditions report fewer somatic and psychological symptoms than boys who hold l~s stressful jobs. However, the results did show that exposu~ to job ~ress is related to ** alcohol and ma r tluana use for both boys and ~rls. The authors proposed four explanations for ~ e i r finding that work is a~ociated with fewer synEptoms in boys but more in garls, differenxiaI se eetton (hardier- b o ~ ~ e ILkely to take more ~ress ul jobs), d enti~ attfifon (hardier boys are akely to remain at
rl2 A, FORNHAM stressful jobs while those less sturdy are likely to leave); differential reporting about health (boys who work under stress are iess likely to report health problems than are girls); and sex differences in soctaazatto (boys are led to expect more stress than gt'r ls). Other studies have been concerned with the effect of youth unemployment as rapid labour turnover and ddiquency. For instance, Baxter (1975) studied chronic job changes in the early I97os. tob cha tended to be less intelligent, more neurotic, from poorer s, and le~ socially and occupationally skilled than their counte~arts who did not change jobs so ra . or, Raffe (I983)~ in a study of em#oyment in Iity in ~ a n g people, found that aIth in ility was generated more by ~ c u p a t i o n ~ than persona| faeto~ (unstable jobs not unstable ~,orkers), their eh of finding new empl e d on onal than on their ~ r l i e r oce onal experience, Similarly, n (198:) found that early career unem L-~ not a critical in ret economic th (relative to edu ba und and job experience), but have n ire job attitudinal consequences. "Young males who are early emrants in the labour and who spend the of their work in part-time employment do as well economically, and better oecupat ly, in their later experience than do full-time employed MiUham, Bullock m:d Hosie (z978), in a s t u ~ of over a :ooo boys in approved schods, found that employment experiences were a crucial factor in promoting economic and social well-being. Though the authors ,were carehfl not to draw casual links between unemployment and delinquency, they did find that regular work did build up offending boys" confidence, changed their job aspirations, enhanced their self-perceptions and remotirated their interest in numeracy and literacy. The problem with nearly all the studies on youth unemployment and psychological adjustment is that one cannot infer cause--only correlation. " I adjustment leads to a That is, it is quite possible that poor psycholo~ca young person being unemployed, rather than the other way around. The only study that attempted a longitudinal analysis of the problem, however, yielded ambiguous results. Wart, Jackson and Banks (i982) inte~iewed two cohorts of recent school leavers over a z-year period and found that measures of psychological stress and self-esteem were found to be corr with the duration of unempl for young men. In one coho~ ~ women, the young e appeared to be better ~ u s t e d the they -were un d, apparendy because of their reduced itment to the labour Mong a per t in y rs. The authors offer two tible ex s for fi'mir puzzling findin e a~odation n eing of pl differ
YOUTH
UNEMPLOYMENT
~x3
between age ~ o u p s (older people with more commitrnentz may experience greater distress) and, secondly, that longer periods of unemployment than those studied in this study (over a year) lead to distress. Similarly, B a n ~ and Jackson (x 982) interviewed two age c~horts of young people up to z½ years after leaving school to investigate the association between unemployment and ~sk of minor psychiatric mo~idity. They found a positive relationship b en unemploymem and morbidity after controlling for s~,-ethnic ~ o u p and educ:ational qualifications. Fu~her lon~tudinal analyses that the experience of unemp ent was more likely to create ~ I ~ym , rather than the re-ve~-e. More y, Jackson, St rd, Banks and Wart (!983) studied :Iongitndinally two c~horts of young people in the first 3 yea~ of r ng lives. They found, as predicted, that psycho|o~eal dist is higher for the unemp|oyed than for the employed, and that eha in eat status lead to ch in d ss score. Fur , this relati is moderated by ~ne person's commitment to he itted suffer more f ~ m the experience of unem eat. Attribution a n d ex¢.ectation about e
ent a n d u
~t
Although there have been some studies of adult explanations of unemployment (Furnham, x98~a, I983), considerably less work has gone into establishing y o u n g ~ o p l e ' s beliefs about, and actual attempts at, getting a job. Feather and Davenport (z98~) tested their ~peetancy valence theory on young pe O ple.* a person's actions are seen to be ~lated to the expectations that a person holds a n d to the subjective values of the outcomes that might occur following the action. They found, as predicted, that higher motivated, more depressed, unemployed youths blamed stable ~ t e r n a l factors for unemployment and rated the attractiveness of work more highly than less depressed youths. Although incompatible w ith learned helplessness theory, the results supported their theory which assumes that positive motivation to seek employment is identical to the multiplicative combination of expectancy of success in g~tting a job a n d the perceived net attractiveness of uemployment. They note: "One might assume that work will have stronger positive valence for individuals with strong Protestant ethic values than for those peo#e for whom these values are weaker. If this a~umption is valid, then it follo.-vsthat people with a strong Protestant ethic value will be more pe~istent in tFmire to get a job and that the)" will suffer n~re ire ts if they fail to ob~in emp t" (p. 337)Gurney (x98i) in examned the attributions for the causes of unemployment in both employed and u n c o l o r e d ps of school leavers.
tt4
A. FURNHAM
in a first study he attempted to discover, among a population of Australian school leavers, whether the unemployed differed in ,ttaeir attributions of employment from t h o ~ who succeeded in getting work and, secondly, whether any differences were ant ant to, or consequent upon, unemployment. Subjects were asked to ascribe the abiiity to get work either to internal or ex:ternal faeto~ to the job seeker, and to fill out a simple eight-item scale devised by the author. He found that ,~nempl males att~buted both getting and not getting significantly more to external as has been found previously-, but there were no di c ~ in the re.aM groups. Gurney ed that ~ne lack of differences among~the ate may be due to their lesser defensi need to blame external s for b unemployed. In a s d lon~ ;uainal study~ studems were given a xz-item attribution-forgetting-jobs questionnaire prior to l ~ v i n g school and then approxima 4 th~ | He z that: "The unet may believe ss to t ~ circum~ances of es but the fact flaat they are without work, ~hereas ~ther~ are no~ and that they ~ , may lead them eventually to see v~ ~ le for their c-ondition (internal attribution) with consequent said arid ~lf-derogation" (p. 89). The results showed that prior to leaving school the groups did not differ, yet later it was not the unemployed who ehanged their attributions, but the employed who shifted sign~icantly toward a more internal set of causal ascriptions. Overall, Gurney (x98x) ~emed unable to account for his and unexpected " tm esting perhaps that sub" counter-mtmttve " '" "' d l ngs, jects of this age have their self-esteem based on numerous other things such as parental evaluation and peer groups approval, rather than exclusively on work which is more often the case with adults. In a rather different study, Dayton (t98r) looked at the way in which young people looked for a job. He set out to determine -what job-seeking approaches were being used by young p ~ p l e and what factors they found positive and useful (aids) and what negative and worthless (barriers) in a job search. Using a population oI 250 young Americans, Dayton found they regarded their own positive personal attributes (personality, flexibility, aca emlc ab~hty) as the most i m p o ~ t aids in their job, and external factors (labour unions, welfare and unemployment insu~aee, government training programme) ~ least t* m o o ~ a nt . Employment success and satisfaction was correlated with ~-eful analysis of which job suited t h ~ best, the assemblauee of a pla ent file, letters of reeommendat i on and a c.v., combined with stenee in the job seraph. Research within the ework of attribution ~ would, ever, Iead
YOUTH
UNEMPLOYMENT
i ~5
one to make a number of predictions about school childrens' expectations and * e beliefs about getting a job (Furnham, ~98za, b, I983). For mstanc, people more prone to unemployment, and the unemployed themselves, tend to ma~ke more external attributions for the causes of unemployment, in contrast to those in jobs and unlikely to become unemployed. Furthermore, studies .... O ns are to some extent protective of have shown that external attnbut3 self-esteem in the context of achievement (Ham.e~v and Iekes, I978). Hence, Furnham (~984)predlct~ that females more than males and working-class s u b j ~ t s more thafi middle-c/ass subject r whom unemployment is statistically more probable-~-will be prone to make more external attributions about getting a job. Further, it was s u b . t e d that these attributions will also refl in fine number and type of job-search st ~ adopted by young " i ng p ~ p t e and the barriers and aids that they consider ~perate ia job-hunt success. In this study, Furnham set out to e~xa~ne sex and class dl.fferences in 240 British schoN le~vers" attributions t unemployment, the r n ~ t and " least useful job-search s t i t c h e" s , and which ~hool course t h ~ belieyed most and least useful in getting a job. The r~uits of the four different-pa~s of this study s u r e s t that, overall, attributions about getting a job are frequently internal (i.e. to personal attributes or abilities) rather than envi~nmental or ~cietal factors. Confidence, perseverance and qualifications were all considered to be primary- facto~ responsible for success in finding employment, yet this is moderated by the belief that jobs are not currently available (a fact which is attributed to the government). Yet failure to get a job ~as rarely attributed to the pe~onal short-comings of the job-seeker himself. Thus, these results tend to suppea the well established, attributional finding that success is attributed to internal faeto~ and failure to external factors. Where there were significant sex differences, it was found that females were more external in their attributions than males, Th~s conflicts with Gurney (I98i), who found that unemployed males were more external in their attributions about employment than employed males, but that the.~ were no differences between employed and unemployed fem~ the extensive locus of control literature has s h ~ n that where: exist in generalized locus of control beliefs, females are more ex~t'nal than males. Similarly, cla~ differences tended to show that wo: iects tend to place more emphasis on structural or e:,~ternaI am, z 9 8 ~ ). Again this is to be expected and in actor e with pre v"lous literature on the topic (Fumham and Gumer, I984). The results on the aids and barriers findings of Dayton (x98r), who f o ~ d that hhe su ts saw t] onal attribut~ as the ~eatest rods and external factors as dn a&ances. Simihrly, ng s t r a t e g y , class and sex diffe s sho that the m iddie e l ~
x~6
A, F U R N H A M
to rate all job-hunting strategies as more useful thart the working ~nd girls showed less faith in following up specific I~Ob choices than boys. T h e subjects all stressed the importance of s u m m e r ,and a~ter-schoo| work for exper~,ence, but tended to rely on onal rather than direct approaches to employers. It would be interesting to t beliefs with those of foyers, who m~y have quite difLerent bel~fs cone whiC~ fa m ~ . e ,an applicant The in the u s e f u l n e ~ of A-level cou rev that ~ t h males and fe bell science e o u ~ s (and the 1 in ng a ~ob, alth ales tended to opt for arts cou and mMes for science at .A_-level. F e m a t ~ air3 bel that arts courses useful than seierme c , so providing a r ~ i ization for die choice, ever, a study such as ttfi.s w~s e to det ne ales arts subiects a,ng~t6hen felt it ~ to justify their ct~iee, or whether they lly believed thenl to be most useful per se arid hence selected them rdi . It is of course also possible that when candidates a pa~ieular they do so for many reasons, only one Of "~hich is its Iness for ing a iob. Further, the believed importance of science courses may reflect recent government empl-msis and finding t o ~ r d s the "hard" sciences, rather than the arts or social sciences. T h e s e results also indicate that attribmiorvs are to some extent a function of the e x p i r a t i o n of work,
Education about unemployment B e e a u ~ it has become so widespread, various researchers have arzued for some sort of education about the problenas and p r o s p e r s of unemployment. Some (Stirling, x982 ) have gone ~ far as to s u r e s t that we need to prepare school leave~ for unemployment, arg~aHg that because as many as one-third of school leavers in B f t a i n (in i 9 8 z ~ 3 ) may experience unenaployment they need to know what to anticipate and how to cope. F u ~ h e r m o r e , high levels of youth u n e m p l o y m e n t have produced a questioning of, and disenchantment with, the whole education (Ha ayes, x98x ). Darey (x978) argued that young people need to be educated in all aspects of job-sharing and to ~ enc to have a new definition of work, to include not only paid e m n-lent but a variety of other ties. T o this end he believes a educa p me should ve such topics as tile m~hanic,s of ~1I fits, the a c q u ~ t i o n of jobskSlls, the exgmrience of u n e m p t ent, I re and munity roles, and the pol~ics of the to work. V,~atts (i978) a I ~ co ered dhe icationz of sehool-leaver unemplo~.~ent for C ~ e e r s Education in ~ h o o l s . H e a r ~ a ~ that ~ ed have not t the em of ent ~ c a u ~ do not t to ~ c k l e it ;
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT ~x7 they are aveare of i~ highly political and emotional overtones; it might affect deleteriously the work ethic ,xfithin and outside the school; and because the teachers feel instinctively hostile to the c o n e ~ t o~ preparation for unemployment. A number of po~ible curricular objectives are listed, including equipping children with employability, survival and leisure skills. Four alternative aims are d e s c r i e d , dependifi~ whether one is focussing on change in society (to help students see unemployment as a phe on by ! and political measures); ge in the individual (to rw~ximize is" of finding ningfuI employment); quo in the y (to rein students' motivation to work); and status in the indivJduM (to make stu of the possibility of une oy and how to best with it). Much of the ca re~ and es are dependent on w er one ~ l i e v ~ ployment to be volu (ave:sion of the wiil to )~ cycl of on rand ex on) or ural (a major change in the rel ip ~m and labour). These solutions may include a d r inca of the , job creation schem~, etc. Careers edu is seen as the education of central life in and personal and develo m~ rather ihe matching of people to (nonnt) jobs. As a practical re, Lave be and Fleming (z98i) attempted to identify (by using attitude measures) those schoolchildren at risk of longer periods of une4mp|oyrnem and hence in particular need of support, information and skills. Although they found that their measures did ~:ot predict which pupils would take longest to find jobs, they believed all pupils should be prepared for unemployment. Their results suggested that employers have little confidence in what teachers report conceding expected examination results, attendance records or attitudes to school, authority or work when selecting among young applicants. Fleming and Lavercombe (x98~), in a study of 29 professionals working with young people, found that the professionals varied ~nsiderably in their topics and approaches. The so~ of topics discussed by the professionals.m" " schools ,acre: whether work itself is the major basis of self-respect and how the unemployed can compensate; how to spend one's leisure/free time; the mechanics of claiming supplementa~ benefit; and possibilities of continuing education and the pMitics of unemployment. In talking with unem#oyed school leavers after school, °the prof~sional bel their primary role was giving support while being as honest as possible. They also believed that their activities h d p e d boredom and anxiety, m h d p t get a job, and to facilitate personal . professional who believed that there -wasa chance of a h's return to w o ~ zed job ing and -kee#ng s~lls, while t h o ~ more istic a t the future of work concen on ng val skills suitable for the u . This
x8
A, F U R N H A M
seemed a basic division among the professionals, some of whom believed their job was primarily to help young people get a I~O b, and others who believed it was to help young people cope and amuse themselves because they ~ never had a job. Not surprtsmgly, many of the p r ofesstonals seemed depressed and exhausted by a job that confronted so starkly the discrepancy between young people's aspirations and the lack of jobs available. ' r ed the future for the whole of More recently, Coffie!d (i 984) has conslde education in a world without lobs. He suggests that young people are learnt g to live with unemployment as a result of mo V'mg in and out of ~ohs and governmem schemes. Furthermore, he notes how the education system and particular schools should be wiging to adapt their curriculum for new circumstances. He proposed a new organization formed by schools, universities and coil of education that would translate research findings " i on s rapid and into industrial terms and vice versa; g l"ve educational "msutut reliable feedback on the general and specific s~l|s needed by young workers at the l:m#nning of their ca~ers; and use latest r e . a r c h findings to update educational curricula. T h u s "a return for a steady stream of articulate, literate and numerate young workers and manage~ with the appropriate skills, local industry would pay to keep both the Unive~ity and local schools in the vangttard of progress" (p. 4x). Although somewhat optimistic, this visionary but practical ap appears to be n e c e ~ a ~ to help prepare young people for the future.
Job dmice and ~ r k expeffence in the young High rates of unemployment naturally affect school !eavers' perceptions, expectations and experiences of employment. Although it has often been suggested that modern youth are reluctant to accept menial and non-menial employment, have lost the willingness to work, and are no longer believers in the Protestant Work Ethic, studies have shown this not to be the ease (Boru% x982). One example of young people's eagerness to work is the number of part-time jobs that they have. There has been a general ~sumption that working teaches young people "responsibility", fosters "social cooperation" and helps in the attainment of new and important job skills, thou~-~ there is not a great deal of hard evidence in support of this (Rugguro and Steinberg, As Sta and Jackson (t98I) have pointed out, the literature on the transition from se to work has derived from two approac he psycho eal, which individual choice in , and the al, which sees entry to work as a of aI tion.
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
~9
A case study of z4 young people's work aspl"rat ions and job-seeking in an area of high unemployment showed that it ~s through the job-search process that young people learn about the accessibility of jobs when these influence [ r rant in "the their asplmt~ons. Because lamlJ i es and friends are so ~mpo job-search process, young people from unemployed or unsupportive families are most at risk. This suggests the importance of the family in the choice of job, the ability to get a job, and the coping strategies used while unemployed. However, search-for-work strategies are in pa~ a consequence of opportunities and experience~ Education, age and race might act in favour or against young people getting work, in a study of immigrant school leavers' search for work, Fowler et aL (z976) found a l a ~ e r propo~ion of native * S BHtons had ae to, and entered~ the "prima D"labour-market" through job with formal training, retativdy g ~ d pay and promotion prospects than did i m m i ~ a n t s who were relegated to the secop.da~ m~rket. They found that explanations in t e ~ s of unrealistic aspi~tions or inadequate job-hunting strat~ies are satisfactory in only a minority of cases, while discr{mination seemed the most obvious explanation. .
.
.
.
.
Values
School leavers develop aspirations about the types of jobs that they would like. These aspirations or work v a l u e s ~ a n and do affect their job satisfaction and personal adjustment. Where there is a large discrepancy in such t h i n ~ as s~lt utilization, mfluene and job variety there l~ hkely to be a high incidence of job dissatisfaction. Various studies have shown that the unemployed feel pro~essively less able to use their abilities and influence their environment in order to obtain desired outcomes. Dowling and O t Bn" e n (I98;) predicted that school leavers who had experienced a s ~ l t l c a n t period of unemployment would lower their desired ....... ti on influences and variety in employment. They levels of sktli-utmza administered a questionnaire to 652 Australian school leavers and then again a year later when ~ m e were employed, some unemployed and some in further education. They found that the employed showed a significant increase in their desire for skill utilization but no change in desired influence and variety, while the students showed ar~ increase in all these work values. Contraw to their pre lction, there was no significant change in the work values of those unemployed. T h e e results are explained in terms of methodo|~ical errors or msulzlc~en attention to individual di nces. Rump (z983) has argued that in the study of unernpk~ed and employed young people one needs to
t;Zo
A. FORNHAM "disting~Jish those whose unemployment has been tempered by eartier employment from those Who have never been in work; those studying by reason of preference from those studying only by reason of failure to obtain employment; and those in employment who have been so for most of their post-school experience from those currently working who have neve~hdcss been unemployed for a long period prior to e:Dtainingwork".
Dowling and O'Brien (r983) reanatysed their data in line with Rump's su~estions, but found no significant differences. Studies on adults have, however, shown a chafige in values as a consequence of unemployment.
Job interv
trmning
One ~nsequence of mass youth has a of attention on the job i w ~ d the skilis required in h. people be aware of the that be e ot skill deficits on the p a n of both inter¢iewers rand i n t e ~ i e w ~ s , p ially able candid were getting rej because of r social per nce in the job inter~ew. Subsequemly, there has been a deal of t detailed on the verbal and non-verbal s~ills required to be successful in a job interview setting (Hollandswo~h, Ot i and Dressel, x977: er and Sushelsky, z978; Hol|andsworth, K skis, Stevens and D ~ s d , ~-979)- Hood, Lindsay and Brooks (I98z) allocated school leavers to either an inte~iewtraining or discu~ion control ~ o u p . The interview-trainlng group received a combination of modelling coaching, role play, feedback and discussion to train both verbal and non-verbal interview skills. Later, the school leavers were assessed using video-taped, role-played interviews which were made at the beginning and the end of each ironing phase. The trained group showed significant improvements on global, as well ~ specific, ratings; quesdon asking and answering, fidgeting, smiling, eye contact, gesture, posture and interest compared to the control group. The researche~ all demonstrated the generalization and maintenance of these treatment effects over time. in conclusion they noted: "Studies that have been concerned -~th interview training for various populations of adot~eents indicated that such training may have a worthvKhile contribution to make in preparing them for seeking employment. In view of the cu~ent employment situation, performance in the inter¢i~ is more critical than ever before ~nd interview training may fulfil a preventive /unetion in inter~Jpting the process of failure in inter,.,iew, tack of ~o~k ~ r i e n e e , arm fu~her faitu~ in int~r¢iew, before: it becomes entrenched and leads to other ~ychologqcal p~blems" (p. 59z). Heimbe~, Cunningham, Stanley and B l a e e n ~
( x ~ z ) conducted a
YOUTH
UNEMPI,OYMENT
I21
similar study in America which aimed to investi~te the effect of social skills training to prepare unemployed youth for the lob interview. Firstly they conducted a series of detailed interviews with unemployed youths, their employment counsellors and potential employers to obtain information about the appropriate "target" behaviours in a job ime~.iew. Subjects were then given a trial run in order to determinate how much training they needed. The performance of the t~ining group .aas compared to two groups of controlled s u b j e c t ~ n e to& played the interviewee in an actual ~ob inte~iew. A|though this study did have some ltmt attons (only quasi-randomization of subjects to conditions), ~' t w a s established that subjects r e ~ l"Vmg ° social skills training surpassed control subjocts on a h u m o r of verbal paralinguistie and other measures employed in the ~ l e play assessment a n d ceeerail performance as rated by an independent set of observe~. F u ~ h e ~ o ~ , ro|e-play ratings at the post.testing s~sion were found to moderately proSict t ~ t i n ~ by employers in the actual inte~iew. Ahhough this interview training for young people is probahly more an ou th of social skills training validation than a response to youth unemployment, it clearly will be of considerable use to prospective job
Research on youth unemployment is scattered :~.Joss a wide number of disciplines: economies, education, psychology (clinical, educational, occupational, social) and socio|o~. Neve~heless it can be divided roughly into two areas: those studies concerned with the cause and consequences of youth unemployment, and those studies concerned vdth preparing or training young people for unemployment and emptoymem respectively. As in nearly e v e q area of social science research, the results are equivocal; nevertheless, various themes en~aerge. For instance, studies on the psychological consequences of unemployment tend to point in'the same direction-namely that unemploymem c a u l s stress, a lowering of self-esteem and a change in expectations. Similarly the work on attributions and expectations has revealed some consistent findings. Taken together, the literature implies a vicious circle for the unemployed school tearer. If, for any reason, the young people are unable to find a iob, he or site m loose stir-esteem, l:~ecome tally ill and t change their tat ions of getting a job. Lowered job expect will no doubt ~ j rch ~ which in turn lower the probability of ng a job, so e o n f i ~ i n g the belief. Hence a I[it|ing ~ y or reel a! d e f e a t i s m ( er~ ~98z) may account for the despair of ~ m e I e~.
xx¢
A, FURNHAM
T h e literature on education and t m in m ~ g is clearer and m o ~ optimistic. Older educational topics and values are being challenged, though there remains some disagreement about the precise direction ia ~which we should move. On the other hand, there ~s close agreement and a moderate degree of success in the training of young people for job i m e ~ i e w s . Although research in t h ~ area is comparatively , difficult and expensive, tl-fis is no excuse for poor studies. O n e reason for the equivocal ambiguous and ed findi is clearly met . Certain~ indivi differences need to be taken more into account. T h e r e are three categories of individual differences which need to be controtIed for an in this . Fi , there are I dif in pets se (e.g. wod~ ethic), etc. of young peoFde and any unempJ nt, or employ , ency. y, there are ic differences in sex, nationM g~oup, etc. ~Vhich condition any young person's world , expectations, etc. Thirdly, there are work_ rience differermes in that some young people have h and , expedenee, and no fence. Each ~ d all of fltese va les haw: exa in one or other of the above studies. T h e problem has been that in concemrating on one variable others have been ignored or, worse still, confounded. T h e reactions of young people to u n e m p l o y m e n t seem sufficiently different to those of adults, and are clearly of utmost importance in their adjustment to the adult world, to merit good research.
REFERENCES Banks, M. and Jackson, P. (t98~). Unemployment ~ d 6sk of minor psychiatric disorder in young people: cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence. PsychologicatMedicine. 12, 789-798. Banks, M., C|egg, C., Jackson, P., Kemp, N , St~ford, E. andW~l~ T. (198o). The use of the Gencrat Health Questionnaire as an indicator of menta! health in occupational studies. J o u ~ a t qf Occupational P~c 53, X87~X94. Baxter, J. (x975). The chronic job changer: a study of youth unemployment. Social and Economic t ,9, t84-2o6. Bogus, M. (198z), WilIingn~ to work among youEri,ffoumal of Human Resources, ~ , Darcy, J. (x978). Education about unemployment: a reflective element, z~of Education, 4r ~ 4. Dayton. C. (i98~). The young person\s iob search: insights from a sttady, of Counseling ~ , 321-333. Do A. and , M. (I98z). I cts of tan era: investigation into the emotior,a! and social ad]uustmemof ~ o I t ~ v e ~ . J o u r ~ t o f 5, z5-3o.
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tz3
Dowling, P. and O'Brien, G. (x98x). The effects of employment, unemployment and further education upon the work values of $ch~t leavers. Australian flour-hal of Psychology, 33, ~85-195, DowIing, P, and O'Brien, G. (~983)~ The woE~t values of ~nemployed and employed youth: a reply to Rump~ Australian Journal C togy, 35, 9~-96. Fea'rher, N. (~98z). Unemplo: corrdates: astudy of depressive symptoms self-esteem, ttrib~tional style and apathy. A n JoumaI of 34, 3o9-3z3 , Feather, N. ~and Davenport~ P. (~#~). Unemp|oyment and depressive effect: a 41, 422-436. F/eming, D. and Lavercombe, S. (I982). Talki~ about unemployment with se-hooll~vers. Bfftis~hf[ou~tat ,of Gu ce and Cbumelli~g, 10, zz-33. Fowler, B., Littlewe~, B~ and Mzdigan, R. (1976). ! m m i ~ n t school-tearers and the search for work. I8, 336-35 ~. Furnham, A. (I ). Explanations for unemplo~,'~nt in Britain. European ffour~al ~" l P~,2: , 1Z~ 335--35z. Furnham, A. (tg82b). The Protestant work ethic and attitud~ towards unemployment. Journal q[ Occupati~naLPsycho ,55, z77-z86. Furnham, .~. (x983). Attitud~ to the unemployed ~cei~ng social security. I-luman Relatio~i~, 36, I35--I5o. Fu rnham, A. (t 984)- G ettir~ a job: school-tearers perceptions of employment prospects. British journal of Ea~cattonal Psychology, 54, 293-3o5. Furnham, A. and Gunter, B. (x984). Just world briefs and attitudes towards the poor. British .7ou~!at of Social Psychology, ~ , ~65~69. Greenberger, E., Steilaer, L. and Vaux, A. (~98a). Adolescents who work: health and behavioural consequences ~ job ~ress. Developmental Psychology, 17, 69x-7o 3. Gurney, R. (a98oa).'The effects-of unemptoymem on the psyehosoeial development of scho~l-leavers. Journal of Occ@ational Psycholo~,, 53, 2os-zx 3, Gurney,~R. (t98ob), Does unemployment affect the self-esteem of zchoot-teavers. Australian ffournal of Psychology, 32, xTS-I8Z. Gurney, R. (x 98x' nempioyment and making attribtttions about '~ the canoes of f Vacationol Behavi.our, 18, 79--9x. Hargreaves, D. (x98t). Unemployment, leisu~ and education. Oxford Review of Harvey, J., Ickes, W. and Kidd, R, (I975) (Eds), New Dl~ctlons mAttrzbu.onResea vh. Vol z. H i l l ~ e , New Je~ey: ~lbaum Press. Heimberg, R., Cunningham, J., Stanley, J. and Blaeenberg, R. (~98~). S~ial skills training to prepare unemployed youth for the job intec,,iew. Bef~aviourModication, 6, z9~32~. Hotlandsworth, J., Gt~egki, R. and Drexel, M. (x978)~ Use of social-skills training in the treatment of extreme anxiety and deficient verbaI skills in the ]ob-inter¢iew setting..Toumal of Applied Behavionr Analysis, 11~ 25~269. Hollandsworth, J., Kazmlskis, R., Ste~,ens, J. and Drexel, M , (t979). Relative contrihvtions of verb~ a~ieulative, and non-verbal communication to employment decisions in the lob interview setting. Pe~onnd Psycholog3~ 32, 359--367. H o ~ , E., Lind~y, W. and Bro-~ks, N. (198z). Inter,dew traiaio~ with adot~cence. v~our rch and ~ e 20, 58x-59z.
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jackson, P., Stafford, E., Banks, M. and Wart, P. (~983)- Unemployment and psychological dlstre~ in young people: the moderating role of employment commitment. Jou~al of oto~, ~ , 525-535. 9, 36-¢5 " Main, B, and Raffe, D, (x983), The transition from sehooI to work in a95o18i: a dynamic account, British Reseamh ~burnal, 9, 57-70~ Makeham, P. (I98o). t: ~ inaffon of no2 on Youth ent Using National Sta Department of Employment. MilIham, S~, Bullock, R, and Ho~c, K,. (i978), Juvenile unemployment: a concept due for re-cycling?floured" of A 1~ I t-~ 4, Raelin, 1. ( t ~ i ) . A compara6ve ~ud'y of later ,~rk experience among ful~-time~ part-time, and male youth, fro ~[ M ~havi~urs, 19, 3xS-327 . Raffe, D. (~983). Empl ku3tabflity among 1 ual of nee and t l , 2I-3 4. Roberts, K., D , J. and Noble, M. (198z). Oat-of~ youth in high un~_rnp a ~ a s : ~n ricat n. of rice and Ru
, M. and Steinberg, L. (~98I). The empirical study of teenage work.Journal of VocationalBeh r, 19r t63-I74, Rump, E. (2983). A comment on Dw,~,lingand O'Brien's"Em and "Unemployed" n Austral~,n ffouma! ~ 35~ Sta E. (I98z). The impa uth mine on young people's em#oyment prospects and psychological well-being. British Journal of Guidance and Counse 10~ x2-~z. Stafford, E. and lacl,.son, P. (x98~). Job choice or iob allocation? Work aspirations and job seeking in an area of high unemployment. Urtpubiisbed. Stlr|ing, A. (I982). Preparing school leaver~ for unemploymem. Bulletin of tl',e British P~ychologicat S ~ e t y , 35, ~ I - 4 ~ , Tessler, R. and Bushe|sky, L. (i978). Eff~ts of eye contact and social status on the perception of a job applicant in an employment inte~iewing situation. Journal of VocationatBehaviour, 13, 338,347° Wart, P., Jackson, P. and Banl,~, M. (198z). Duration o[ unemployment and psychological well-being in young men and women, Current Psyeholo~calResearch, 2, 2o7-z~ 4, Watts, A. (1978). The implications of sehool-leavers: unemployment for careers education in schools, journal of Cumculum Studies, 3, ~33-~5 o.