R A Settersten
Biographic Data
| ID | 90549 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R A Settersten |
| GIVEN NAMES | R A |
| FAMILY NAME | Settersten |
| SIGNATURE | SETTERSTEN R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oregon State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8761-6462 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 253 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The multidimensional online civic engagement for youth (Moce-Y) scale
Online civic engagement among young people may represent a form of positive youthdevelopment in digital spaces. However, its impacts on youth’s well-being remain unclear,partly due to a lack of validated measures that capture the unique features of the internetand incorporate youth voices. To address this gap, we developed and validated a scale ofmultidimensional online civic engagement for youth aged 15 to 25 years (MOCE-Y) using anexploratory s…
Civic Participation and Meaning in Life
Civic engagement is an important component of youth thriving, but prior research—focused primarily on political engagement—has found a “civic engagement gap” between youth with marginalized identities and those with privileged social identities. Research is needed to understand youth involvement in other civic activities, patterns of disparities, and any implications of these differences for youth well-being. In this study, we examined difference…
Daily Caregiving Appraisals, Future Self-Views, and Physical Activity Goals Among Adult-Daughter Dementia Caregivers
Results suggest that one pathway through which subjective caregiving experiences, especially negative caregiving appraisals, affect caregivers' physical activity goal pursuit is through future self-views. Thus, this study offers a deeper theoretical understanding of caregivers' self-regulatory health behavior and new empirical information on how caregiving might affect life-span developmental motivation
Summary of Living on the Edge
Living on the Edge: An American Generation’s Journey through the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2021) tells the story of the rarely studied 1900 generation, from their social origins to their old age, as they coped with and adapted to the revolutionary changes of the last century. Using longitudinal data from the Berkeley Guidance Study, the authors followed 420 parents (210 couples) born between 1885 and 1908, all of whom had ch…
Aging-related changes in the association between negative affect and response time inconsistency in older adulthood
Negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) are established modifiable psychosocial correlates of cognitive health and have demonstrated capacity for meaningful within-person fluctuations based on person–environment interactions, age, and measurement approach. Previous research has shown NA is associated with increased response time inconsistency (RTI), an early performance-based indicator of cognitive health and aging. It is unclear, however, …
Perceptions of intolerant norms both facilitate and inhibit collective action among sexual minorities
This article presents the results of three studies that examine how the perceived opinions of others are related to sexual minorities' support for social change toward greater equality. Results of two cross-sectional studies (Study 1: N = 1,220; Study 2: N = 904) reveal that perceived intolerance (i.e., perceived intolerant societal norms) is indirectly related to intentions to engage in collective action in both negative and positive ways: the n…
Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens
How Do Discrimination and Self-Esteem Control Beliefs Affect Prosociality? An Examination Among Black and Latinx Youth
Black and Latinx youth are situated in a maladaptive discriminatory context in the United States; however, prosociality may be one way that youth can promote their own positive development in the face of these experiences. We examined the longitudinal associations between discrimination and prosociality among 380 Black and Latinx early adolescents (M W6age = 12.38 years, 52% female) and considered race/ethnicity and self-esteem control beliefs as…
The life course cube
This paper proposes a conceptualization of the life course as a set of behavioral processes characterized by interdependencies that cross time, life domains, and levels of analysis. We first discuss the need for a systematized approach to life course theory that integrates parallel and partially redundant concepts developed in a variety of disciplines. We then introduce the 'life course cube,' which graphically defines and illustrates time-domain…
What Do I Call Us? The Investment Model of Commitment Processes and Changes in Relationship Categorization
The investment model of commitment has been used to understand relationship maintenance and dissolution across a variety of populations and relationship types. The current study used data from the Project on Partner Dynamics (POPD), a cohort study of young adults involved in nonmarital sexual relationships in the Los Angeles area, to test whether and how the investment model of commitment processes predicts individuals' self-reported categorizati…
Leveraging Public Health Research to Inform State Legislative Policy that Promotes Health for Children and Families
How young adults’ appraisals of work and family goals changed over the Great Recession
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine how work and family goals of young men and women changed from before to after the Great Recession and how these changes differed for those in rural and urban areas. We focus on Germany, where the overall labor market showed a uniquely mild response to the recession, but where young adults nonetheless experienced significant economic risk relative to other age groups and where rural areas…
Lives in Time and Place
Time and place are of the greatest significance for scientific inquiry about human lives. As we seek to better understand the nature and rhythm of the life course in modern societies, its effective analysis and explanation simultaneously becomes more pressing and more complicated. This information is crucial for developing and reforming social policies, services, and interventions aimed at improving human development and welfare. Yet as our scien…
They're just made up different”
Let’s pull these technologies out of the ivory tower”
This paper investigates how groups of ‘citizen scientists’ in non-traditional settings and primarily online networks claim to be challenging conventional genomic research processes and norms. Although these groups are highly diverse, they all distinguish their efforts from traditional university- or industry-based genomic research as being ‘participant-driven’ in one way or another. Participant-driven genomic research (PDGR) groups often work fro…
Associations Between Incarcerated Fathers' Cumulative Childhood Risk and Contact With Their Children
Incarcerated fathers often experience early life risk factors that cumulate over time and are compounded by the negative repercussions of imprisonment. These dynamics may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of risk and help explain the persistent link between paternal incarceration and poor child outcomes. Contact between incarcerated fathers and their children can benefit them both, but there is limited research on the factors that …
From “Personalized” to “Precision” Medicine
Since the late 1980s, the human genetics and genomics research community has been promising to usher in a “new paradigm for health care”—one that uses molecular profiling to identify human genetic variants implicated in multifactorial health risks. After the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, a wide range of stakeholders became committed to this “paradigm shift,” creating a confluence of investment, advocacy, and enthusiasm that bear…
Normative Climates of Parenthood across Europe
Past research on gender role attitudes has often focused on individual- rather than country-level explanations. Drawing on European Social Survey data from 21 countries, we examine the effect of societal normative climates (i.e., shared perceptions of others’ attitudes) on personal attitudes towards two non-traditional gender roles: Voluntary childlessness and working full-time while children are young. To detect potential gender differences, we …
Becoming Adult
This essay examines a range of meanings and markers of adulthood, from biological to social, psychological, and legal. It describes a shift from more universal and traditional definitions of adulthood, which were also heavily gendered, to an increasingly diverse and personalized set of definitions. This shift reflects the prolonged, complex, and highly unequal spectrum of pathways that young people take into adulthood today. And yet, public perce…
Relationships in Time and the Life Course
Life’s strongest storylines are punctuated by and enmeshed with other people. The principle of “linked lives”—that the lives of individuals affect and are affected by the lives of others—is repeated as a mantra in life course literature. And yet this stands in direct contrast to the state of research, which largely treats individuals as if they exist in isolation of others. This author’s wish for the study of human development is to take more ser…
Bioidentical hormones, menopausal women, and the lure of the “natural” in U.S. anti-aging medicine
Responses to Financial Loss During the Great Recession
The "Great Recession" shocked the primary institutions that help individuals and families meet their needs and plan for the future. This study examines middle-aged adults' experiences of financial loss and considers how socioeconomic and interpersonal resources facilitate or hinder maintaining a sense of control in the face of economic uncertainty. Method: Using the 2006 and 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, change in income and weal…
Fathers’ Accounts of Struggle and Growth in Early Adulthood
This chapter explores how fatherhood prompts struggle and growth in the psychological, social, and economic changes associated with the transition to adulthood. Little is known about these connections, especially for disadvantaged Latino and White fathers who live in small and mid-sized American communities. We draw on eight in-depth focus groups with 48 fathers (27 Latino and 21 White) who have children in low-income schools in a small and mid-s…
Are "Anti-Aging Medicine" and "Successful Aging" Two Sides of the Same Coin? Views of Anti-Aging Practitioners
Anti-aging practitioners' adoption of the rhetoric of successful aging reflects the success of successful aging models in shaping popular conceptions of what aging is and an ethos of management and control over the aging process. The overlap between anti-aging and successful aging rhetoric also highlights some of the most problematic social, cultural, and economic consequences of efforts made to reconceptualize old age
Are Conceptions of Adulthood Universal and Unisex? Ages and Social Markers in 25 European Countries
Despite ample research on behavioral aspects of the transition to adulthood, few comparative studies have focused on “subjective” facets. Using data from the European Social Survey, we probe similarities and differences in conceptions of adulthood for men and women in twenty-five European countries. We examine perceptions of the age of adulthood and the importance of four social markers (leaving home, having a full-time job, living with a partner…
The Measurement of Age, Age Structuring, and the Life Course
The measurement of age, age structuring, and the life course has become more problematic as the study of human lives has moved toward more detailed analyses and explanations. As we seek to better understand the course of human lives in contemporary and changing societies, the effective empirical measurement of its key concepts simultaneously becomes more pressing and more complicated. We first review the critical concepts of, and measurement stra…
A Time to Leave Home and a Time Never to Return? Age Constraints on the Living Arrangements of Young Adults
Given profound demographic change in patterns of leaving and returning home since the 1960s, little attention has been paid to classical sociological questions related to age norms. Interviews were conducted with a random sample of 319 adults in the Chicago metropolitan area. A large majority of respondents perceived an age deadline for leaving home. In addition, there was nearly complete agreement that both men and women should leave home betwee…
Comer's School Development Program in Prince George's County, Maryland
A randomized experiment of Comer's School Development Program was conducted in 23 middle schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. The school population is predominantly African American, with considerable internal variation in household socioeconomic standing. This study involved repeated measurement with more than 12,000 students and 2,000 staff a survey of more than 1,000 parents, and extensive access to student records. It showed that Come…
Are Conceptions of Adulthood Universal and Unisex? Ages and Social Markers in 25 European Countries
Despite ample research on behavioral aspects of the transition to adulthood, few comparative studies have focused on “subjective” facets. Using data from the European Social Survey, we probe similarities and differences in conceptions of adulthood for men and women in twenty-five European countries. We examine perceptions of the age of adulthood and the importance of four social markers (leaving home, having a full-time job, living with a partner…
In the vanguard of biomedicine? The curious and contradictory case of anti-ageing medicine
The rise of anti-ageing medicine is emblematic of the current conditions of American biomedicine. Through in-depth interviews with 31 anti-ageing practitioners, we examine how practitioners strive for-and justify-a model of care that runs counter to what they see as the 'assembly line' insurance-managed industry of healthcare. Their motivation, however, is not merely a reaction to conventional medicine. It is derived from what they see as a set o…
Passages to Adulthood
Perceptions of intolerant norms both facilitate and inhibit collective action among sexual minorities
This article presents the results of three studies that examine how the perceived opinions of others are related to sexual minorities' support for social change toward greater equality. Results of two cross-sectional studies (Study 1: N = 1,220; Study 2: N = 904) reveal that perceived intolerance (i.e., perceived intolerant societal norms) is indirectly related to intentions to engage in collective action in both negative and positive ways: the n…
Normative Climates of Parenthood across Europe
Past research on gender role attitudes has often focused on individual- rather than country-level explanations. Drawing on European Social Survey data from 21 countries, we examine the effect of societal normative climates (i.e., shared perceptions of others’ attitudes) on personal attitudes towards two non-traditional gender roles: Voluntary childlessness and working full-time while children are young. To detect potential gender differences, we …
Linking the Two Ends of Life
This paper extends provocative ideas from the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies to the field of gerontology. These ideas constitute a framework for building new kinds of theories and research on old people and old age-gathered around rights and responsibilities of and for old people; focused on their agency and social participation; concerned with the social problems of old people, as well as how old people are constructed to …
Life Planning among Young Adults in 23 European Countries
How do conditions of security, either on the individual or societal level, affect the propensity of young adults to plan? We begin with two basic sets of hypotheses. In the positive direction, when young adults have greater security, planning will be more possible and more necessary to narrow the field of options; when young adults have lower security, planning will be less possible and less necessary. In the negative direction, when young adults…
They're just made up different”
Associations Between Incarcerated Fathers' Cumulative Childhood Risk and Contact With Their Children
Incarcerated fathers often experience early life risk factors that cumulate over time and are compounded by the negative repercussions of imprisonment. These dynamics may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of risk and help explain the persistent link between paternal incarceration and poor child outcomes. Contact between incarcerated fathers and their children can benefit them both, but there is limited research on the factors that …
Responses to Financial Loss During the Great Recession
The "Great Recession" shocked the primary institutions that help individuals and families meet their needs and plan for the future. This study examines middle-aged adults' experiences of financial loss and considers how socioeconomic and interpersonal resources facilitate or hinder maintaining a sense of control in the face of economic uncertainty. Method: Using the 2006 and 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, change in income and weal…
Are "Anti-Aging Medicine" and "Successful Aging" Two Sides of the Same Coin? Views of Anti-Aging Practitioners
Anti-aging practitioners' adoption of the rhetoric of successful aging reflects the success of successful aging models in shaping popular conceptions of what aging is and an ethos of management and control over the aging process. The overlap between anti-aging and successful aging rhetoric also highlights some of the most problematic social, cultural, and economic consequences of efforts made to reconceptualize old age
Invitation to the Life Course
Military Service During Wartime Effects on Men's Occupational Trajectories and Later Economic Well-Being
German men now over the age of 70 began their occupational careers during unfavourable historical circumstances. World War II forced many men out of the labour market, and, after spending time as soldiers or prisoners, these men faced the task of rebuilding their work lives. How did military service affect the occupational careers of these men? How permanent were those effects? Were certain cohorts affected more than others? And how did it affect…
From the lab to the front line
Problems and Methods in Longitudinal Research
1. Studying individual development: problems and method 2. Modeling individual and average human growth data from childhood to adulthood 3. Intraindividual variability in older adults' depression scores: some implications for developmental theory and longitudinal research 4. Now you see it, now you don't - some considerations on multiple regression 5. Differential development of health in a life-span perspective 6. Assessing of change in a cohort…
What's the Latest? II. Cultural Age Deadlines for Educational and Work Transitions
The age-normative framework has gained widespread acceptance among students of the life course since the pioneering work of Bernice Neugarten had her colleagues in the 1960s. Investigators have begun to call for new research in this area to determine how these schedules operate in contemporary American society, how they might vary by life sphere, and how they might operate differently for men and women or along other important social divisions. B…
What's the Latest? Cultural Age Deadlines for Family Transitions
Several questions about the degree to which cultural schedules exist for the timing of life transitions, as well as the nature of these schedules, remain unexplored. In this article, we examine age timetables for central family transitions. Do individuals perceive age deadlines for these transitions, and by what ages do they think that men or women should have experienced them? How much consensus exists about these deadlines? Why are they conside…
The Measurement of Age, Age Structuring, and the Life Course
The measurement of age, age structuring, and the life course has become more problematic as the study of human lives has moved toward more detailed analyses and explanations. As we seek to better understand the course of human lives in contemporary and changing societies, the effective empirical measurement of its key concepts simultaneously becomes more pressing and more complicated. We first review the critical concepts of, and measurement stra…
A Time to Leave Home and a Time Never to Return? Age Constraints on the Living Arrangements of Young Adults
Given profound demographic change in patterns of leaving and returning home since the 1960s, little attention has been paid to classical sociological questions related to age norms. Interviews were conducted with a random sample of 319 adults in the Chicago metropolitan area. A large majority of respondents perceived an age deadline for leaving home. In addition, there was nearly complete agreement that both men and women should leave home betwee…
Comer's School Development Program in Prince George's County, Maryland
A randomized experiment of Comer's School Development Program was conducted in 23 middle schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. The school population is predominantly African American, with considerable internal variation in household socioeconomic standing. This study involved repeated measurement with more than 12,000 students and 2,000 staff a survey of more than 1,000 parents, and extensive access to student records. It showed that Come…
Military Service During Wartime Effects on Men's Occupational Trajectories and Later Economic Well-Being
German men now over the age of 70 began their occupational careers during unfavourable historical circumstances. World War II forced many men out of the labour market, and, after spending time as soldiers or prisoners, these men faced the task of rebuilding their work lives. How did military service affect the occupational careers of these men? How permanent were those effects? Were certain cohorts affected more than others? And how did it affect…
Some Ways in Which Neighborhoods, Nuclear Families, Friendship Groups, and Schools Jointly Affect Changes in Early Adolescent Development
This study assessed some ways in which schools, neighborhoods, nuclear families, and friendship groups jointly contribute to positive change during early adolescence. For each context, existing theory was used to develop a multiattribute index that should promote successful development. Descriptive analyses showed that the four resulting context indices were only modestly intercorrelated at the individual student level (N = 12,398), but clustered…
New frontiers in socialization
Table of contents. List of contributors. Preface. The Field of Socialization in Review. New frontiers in socialization: an introduction (T.J. Owens, R.A. Settersten, Jr.). Socialization and the life course: new frontiers in theory and research (R.A. Settersten, Jr.). Self-socialization and post-traditional society (W. Heinz). Life careers and the theory of action (J. Giele). Socialization in Specific Contexts. Work Settings. Understanding adaptat…
Age Structuring and the Rhythm of the Life Course
Invitation to the Life Course
Growing Up is Harder to do
In the past several decades, a new life stage has emerged: early adulthood. No longer adolescents, but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of an adult, many young people are caught between needing to learn advanced job skills and depending on their family to support them during the transition.
On the Frontier of Adulthood
Shifts in culture and society worked together to define adolescence as a meaningful life period separate from childhood and adulthood. Similar forces are at work today to make early adulthood a distinct and socially recognized stage of life. This book draws together information from a variety of sources to provide a more accurate and textured picture of early adulthood. It analyzes demographic, social, and economic transitions that occur as young…
On the Frontier of Adulthood
On the Frontier of Adulthood reveals a startling new fact: adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends. A lengthy period before adulthood, often spanning the twenties and even extending into the thirties, is now devoted to further education, job exploration, experimentation in romantic relationships, and personal development.Especially dramatic shifts have occurred in the conventional markers of adulthood - leaving home, finishing school, ge…
Linking the Two Ends of Life
This paper extends provocative ideas from the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies to the field of gerontology. These ideas constitute a framework for building new kinds of theories and research on old people and old age-gathered around rights and responsibilities of and for old people; focused on their agency and social participation; concerned with the social problems of old people, as well as how old people are constructed to …
Passages to Adulthood
Age Identity
Age is important for societies, groups, and individuals (Settersten 2003a). For example, age underlies the organization of family, educational, work, and leisure institutions and organizations. Many laws and policies structure rights, responsibilities, and entitlements on the basis of age. Members of a society may share informal ideas about age and the changes that occur between birth and death, and individuals use these ideas to organize their l…
From the lab to the front line
The Salience of Age in the Life Course
This article outlines several emerging debates on the salience of age in the life course. A set of recent data, based on interviews with a random sample of 319 adults in the Chicago metropolitan area, are then presented to shed new light on aspects of those debates. The data concern individuals’ perceptions of the relevance of age for a set of fourteen life course transitions. These transitions are clustered into three separate spheres – the sphe…
What's Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood
Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray examine the lengthening transition to adulthood over the past several decades, as well as the challenges the new schedule poses for young people, families, and society. The authors begin with a brief history of becoming an adult, noting that the schedule that youth follow to arrive at adulthood changes to meet the social realities of each era. For youth to leave home at an early age during the 1950s, for example…
In the vanguard of biomedicine? The curious and contradictory case of anti-ageing medicine
The rise of anti-ageing medicine is emblematic of the current conditions of American biomedicine. Through in-depth interviews with 31 anti-ageing practitioners, we examine how practitioners strive for-and justify-a model of care that runs counter to what they see as the 'assembly line' insurance-managed industry of healthcare. Their motivation, however, is not merely a reaction to conventional medicine. It is derived from what they see as a set o…
Social age deadlines for the childbearing of women and men
BACKGROUND: This study examines whether social age deadlines exist for childbearing in women and men, how they vary across countries, whether they are lower than actual biological deadlines and whether they are associated with childbearing at later ages and the availability of assisted reproduction techniques (ARTs). METHODS: This study is based on the European Social Survey, Round 3 (2006-2007), which covers 25 countries. Data were gathered on s…
Fatherhood
Personalized Genomic Medicine and the Rhetoric of Empowerment
A decade after the completion of the Human Genome Project, the widespread appeal of personalized genomic medicine's vision and potential virtues for health care remains compelling. Advocates argue that our current medical regime “is in crisis as it is expensive, reactive, inefficient, and focused largely on one size fits all treatments for events of late stage disease.” What is revolutionary about this kind of medicine, its advocates maintain, is…
Are "Anti-Aging Medicine" and "Successful Aging" Two Sides of the Same Coin? Views of Anti-Aging Practitioners
Anti-aging practitioners' adoption of the rhetoric of successful aging reflects the success of successful aging models in shaping popular conceptions of what aging is and an ethos of management and control over the aging process. The overlap between anti-aging and successful aging rhetoric also highlights some of the most problematic social, cultural, and economic consequences of efforts made to reconceptualize old age
Psychology (39 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Political science (25 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Life course approach (16 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (12 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (12 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (11 works)