How Adolescents Structure Themselves in their Contexts

Abstract

The recent years, adolescents with stress and burnout symptoms have increased. This research aims to find answers in how this stress and burnout symptoms could be reduced. This research divides three types of contexts in the life of an adolescent, namely: Work, School, and Personal-life. These contexts all have demands and responsibilities adolescents have to meet. Managing these demands and responsibilities cause stress, this research focusses on how adolescents structure themselves in their contexts. A semi-structured interview was designed with the help of two other Educational sciences students. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen participants. Results indicate that adolescents prioritize one or two context(s) in their life. Specifically the context, School. Demands and responsibilities of the prioritized context are used while adolescents structure themselves in their contexts. Adolescents use time management behavior while they structure themselves in their contexts. Results indicate that adolescents who find their life structured, are also able to include elements from one context into another. These adolescents are identified as Boundary crossers. This research lacks information about experienced stress among adolescents. Therefore, future research should both investigate if adolescents who prioritize the context, School, also experience more stress, and if boundary crossers, experience less stress.