PsychologicalReports, 1992, 71, 595-606.
O Psychological Reports 1992
SUMMER AND SCHOOL-TERM YOUTH EMPLOYMENT ECOLOGICAL A N D LONGITUDINAL ANALYSES ' PATRICK H . HARDESTY UniversiQ of huisville
AND
BARTON J. HIRSCH Northwestern University
Summary.-The effects of summer versus school-year employment on seu-esteem, peer relationships, and family social climate were investigated in a sample of 135 adolescents. Students were assessed the summer before entrance into high school and during the second semester of high school, using a longitudinal design. Cross-sectional findings indicated that, during the summer, 52 workers possessed higher self-esteem than 79 nonworkers. Longitudinal analysis indicated that 10 girls who worked only during the school term reported increases in both stress and activity with peen. At our final assessment, the families of 49 students who did not work at either time had become more conflicted and less cohesive than families of all other students. The dwelopmental implications of these results are discussed.
Work is a major role through much of life. Most Americans are introduced to this role in adolescence through summer jobs or part-time employment during the school year. Currently, about 80% of American youth wlll have held jobs before leaving high school (Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986). Assumption of this new role involves an ecological transition (cf. Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The work role needs to be integrated with relationships and social identities built around other social roles. For adolescents, some of their most important existing roles-academic, family, and friendship-can be very different in the summer from what they are during the school year. This suggests that adolescents may adapt quite differently to the work role in the summer than during the school year, although these have not been examined in previous research. Two potential differences in adaptation to summer versus school-term employment are of particular concern in the present study. The first issue regards the salience of the work role to the adolescent's self-esteem. Symbolic interactionists posit that self-concept is based on social roles (e.g., Stryker, 1980). Self-esteem is based on evaluation of role performance and roles which are more central to self-concept have the greatest potential effect on self-esteem. The process of incorporating new roles into the self-concept can be problematic. High school students beginning paid em'This article is based on a dissertation presented to Northwestern University by P H . Hardesty under the direction of B. J. Hirsch. We are graceful to John Crites and James Rosenbaum for their comments on an earlier draft. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented dt the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, August, 1959 Funding for this research was provided via a New Investigator Research Award in Prevcnt~onFrom the National Institute of Mental Health to Barton J. Hirsch, who is currently supported m part by the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. Correspondence should be addressed to either Patrick H. Hardesty, Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292 or Barton J. Hirsch, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
596
I? H. HARDESTY
&
B. J. HIRSCH
ployment must balance work with school, with academic demands often of higher priority. Managing multiple roles is not an easy task. Working students are less satisfied with school, spend less time on homework, and are less involved in extracurricular activities (Steinberg, Greenberger, Garduque, Ruggiero, & Vaux, 1982). Although most workers perform as well as nonworkers academically, in some studies (e.g., Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986), though not all (D'Amico, 1984; Schill, McCartin, & Meyer, 1985), academic performance declines when students work more than 15 or 20 hours/week. Only one study has directly examined the relation between working and selfesteem during the school term. Steinberg and Dornbusch (1991) reported that students who worked the most hours outside of school reported the lowest self-esteem. They also had the poorest school performance, even when controlling for orientation toward school. If competing demands from school are likely to constrain positive contributions of worlung to self-esteem, these factors should be less prevalent in summer than school-year jobs. In the summer, adolescents either do not go to school, so that the student role does not compete with the work role, or they generally take lighter academic loads, which also should reduce role conflict. Summer jobs may provide greater opportunity for enhancement of selfesteem than school-year jobs. However, no prior study has tested whether summer jobs differ from school-year jobs in their relation to self-esteem. The second major focus of our research was on how the work role is integrated with family and friendships. Working youth are immersed in new environments and roles, which may alter their emerging identities and their perspective on family and friendship relationships. They also have greater financial resources but less available time. Worlung may enrich relationships as well as introduce new sources of stress. These issues have only begun to be addressed empirically and findings are inconclusive. In the family sphere, some studies showed no effect of working on involvement with family or quality of family relationships (Steinberg, et al., 1982; Steinberg & Dornbusch, 1991), while others indicated workers to be less involved with family members (Greenberger, Steinberg, Vaux, & McAuliffe, 1980). Worktng was associated with less dependence by adolescent boys on their parents in one study (Gottfredson, 1985). However, Steinberg, et al. (1982) found working girls to be more self-reliant and working boys less so than their nonworking peers. The latter study also indicated that as the number of hours worked increased, family closeness increased for boys and decreased for girls (Steinberg, et al., 1982), suggesting the importance of examining possible gender differences. Data on the relation of working to peer ties are even more sparse. Working did not affect time spent with peers or the quality of peer relationships in general (Greenberger, et al., 1980).
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
597
Several limitations of this earlier research should be noted. Most of the findings come from a single research project in Orange County, California (Greenberger, et a[., 1980). Several inconsistent results are from this project, reflecting differences in cross-sectional versus longitudinal analyses, the interpretation of which is not always clear. The longitudinal design in that research also has some limitations. The two groups compared were those who were not working at any time versus those who did not work at Time 1 but then were working at the follow-up. This did not permit analyses of the effects of working at both times or of working at Time 1 and then not working at Time 2 . Such additional contrasts would help to clarify possible developmental processes. Prior studies on the relation of employment to family and peer relationships have also focused exclusively on school-term employment. Summer jobs may have considerably different effects on family and friendship ties. Parents may be more likely to endorse summer jobs because they do not detract from academics, still leave time available for other pursuits, and diminish unsupervised time in the home if both parents work. O n the other hand, teenage employment responsibilities may make planning family vacations more difficult. Friendships may more easily accommodate summer jobs given the substantial unstructured time still available. However, problems would confront friendships that revolved around shared school experiences. The present research examines both summer and school-term employment in a longitudinal design. Students are assessed during the course of the transition from junior high to high school. For many students, beginning paid employment outside the home is an important element of the developmental changes marked by this school change. This is an excellent time in which to examine the environmental context of early work experiences. This study had three principal goals. First, we compared the effects of summer and school-term employment on self-esteem. Given the absence of prior research on summer jobs, we were especially concerned with the hypothesis that working would be associated with higher self-esteem during the summer. Second, we examined how summer and school-term employment bears on family and peer relationships. Our prior discussion suggested that the work role may be more easily managed vis A vis other roles during the summer. In addition, theory and research with adults suggests that women encounter more stress in managing multiple-role involvements than do men (Hirsch & Rapkin, 1986). We consider whether this gender pattern is manifest at initial involvement in the work role. Finally, we consider the longitudinal relation of summer and school-term jobs to self-esteem, f a d y relationships, and friendships. Four longitudinal employment patterns are analyzed based on whether students did or did not work during the summer and school-year. This phase of the research involves a more exploratory examination of potential developmental processes.
598
l? H. HARDESTY & B. J. HIRSCH
METHOD Design and Sample Students were assessed twice in a longitudinal design. The first assessment was in the summer during the transition from junior h g h (Grade 9) to high school (Grade 10); the second assessment was during the spring of Grade 10. The sample of 135 students (boys = 65, girls = 70) were two successive cohorts. The first group included 53 students and the second cohort 82; the subject pool in each year was about 325. As part of a larger project, students were selected in a 2 x 2 design based on measures of family and peer support utilizing essentially a median split on those measures. Students were from a midwestern town of approximately 100,000. At Time 1, the summer preceding high school, most of the adolescents were fourteen or fifteen years old (M = 14.8, SD = .42). Fifteen black students participated in the study, representing 11% of the sample. Because the number was small, separate analyses for race were not conducted. Inslruments Self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965).-This is a frequently used 10-item self-report scale with statistical data supporting its reliability and v d d i t y . Although items on this instrument are typically answered on a 4-point scale, a 6-point scale was used in thls study for two reasons. The first reason is logistical, as the scale was presented with another scale using a 6-point format, and this choice allowed a consistent presentation. The second is methodological, to try to minimize the ceding effects sometimes encountered. Subjects' scores were the mean of all items answered and so had a possible range of 1 to 6. The Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1986).-The Family Environment Scale, a self-report measure of the family social climate, is a 90item scale, nine items for each of 10 subscales: cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, independence, achievement orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, active recreational orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization, and control. The subscales have good internal reliability and have been extensively related to psychological outcomes among diverse populations, including adolescents. After reverse scoring the appropriate items, all items scored in the keyed direction were summed to obtain students' scores on each scale. Scores could range from 0 to 9. Peer friendships.-Self-report friendship data were collected during individual interviews. Adolescents reported up to six friends who were significant in their lives. Three peer-related variables were then assessed. The first of these is the variable activity. This is the number of activities engaged in with the six identified friends. This scale has five items: had gone shopping, had gone to movies, had participated in nonspectator sports, had gone to parties or dances, and had gone out on dates together. Items were scored as
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
599
1 if not endorsed and 2 if endorsed. The total scale score was the mean of
all items for all friends; scores could range from 1 to 2. The second, confidence, is the amount of confidence shared with the friends. I t consists of five items: talk about very private or personal concerns, talk about personal matters concerning the subject's family, talk of personal matters regarding the friend's family, talk about the opposite sex, and talk about ideas. Items were scored from 1 to 3 depending on the reported frequency of each activity. Scale scores were the mean of all items for all friends and potential scores ranged from 1 to 3 . The third variable is stress, which is composed of four items: had been in conflict, had not seen friend for a long time, sometimes cannot trust friend, and separated by geographical distance. The conflict item was scored 1 to 3 representing no conflict, minor conflict, and major conflict. The other items were scored 1 or 2. Scale score was the mean of all items and could range from 1 to 2.25. I n previous research (Hirsch & Reischl, 1985) internal consistencies (Cronbach alpha) for the three scales were .64, .69, and .31, respectively. The low internal consistency of the stress scale results from the scale being a composite of four unrelated social situations that could be sources of stress within adolescent relationships. I t was not expected that one source of stress would necessarily be accompanied by the other sources of stress. Socioeconomic status.-The socioeconomic status of each student was estimated in accordance with the work of Stevens and Featherman (1981), an updated version of Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, based on the students' report of ~ a r e n t a occupation. l The higher occupation of either the mother or father was used as the student's index of socioeconomic status. There was considerable variation, with scores ranging from 13 to 87 (M = 52.1, SD = 22.0). Potential scores range from 11.1 to 88.7. Work status.-At each time, students were asked whether or not they worked, to estimate the number of hours worked per week, and what type of work they did. Hours worked in the summer ranged from 1 to 60 hours per week (M = 18.25, SD = 16.28, n = 49). For the school year, hours worked per week ranged from 1 to 32 (A4 = 13.67, SD = 7.92, n = 47). The most frequently reported summer jobs were mowing (n = 8), paper routes (7), babysitting (3), and restaurantlfast-food jobs (3). During the school year, the most prevalent job was restaurantlfast-food worker (n = 12), followed by paper routes (4), and mowing (4). Procedure Students were selected based on questionnaire measures of family and peer support administered during ~ r a d e9 (junior high). The assessments of the subjects comprising the final sample were made the summer before Grade 10, w h c h is the beginning of high school in this school system, and again at the end of the second semester of high school. At each time, stu-
600
l? H. HARDESTY & B. J. HIRSCH
dents were mailed the questionnaires which were completed prior to an interview. All interviews of one to two hours took place at home or in a university office. Subjects were paid for their participation.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were completed for each of the domains under study. The cross-sectional analyses explored differences between workers and nonworkers for each of the two time periods of the study, summer and school year. The longitudinal component of the study d o w e d analysis of the relation of employment patterns to changes in self-esteem, peer relationships, and family ties. Multivariate covariate analyses were employed for each domain; Time 1 data were entered as covariates to adjust for Time 2 results. Data for 125 subjects were available for the longitudinal analyses in which were compared four groups of students defined by pattern of employment. One group of students did not work at either time (18 boys and 31 girls). A second group worked only during the summer and was comprised of 12 boys and 12 girls. The third group did not work in the summer but did work during the second semester of high school (14 boys and 10 girls). Lastly, there were 16 boys and 12 girls who worked both during the summer and-while in school. Membership in any of the four work pattern groups was unrelated to socioeconomic status and gender. ~
Self-esteem Cross-sectional analysis of Time 1 data, during the summer, gave a significant effect of working on self-esteem (F,,,,, = 8.26, p < 0.005). Workers (M = 4.7, SD = 1.0, n = 52) reported higher self-esteem than nonworkers (M = 4.3, SD = .8, n = 79). The increased self-esteem of workers was unrelated to socioeconomic status. There were no significant differences in self-esteem associated with working versus not working at Time 2, during the school year. The longitudinal analyses for the four .employment patterns did not yield significant effects. The relative ranking among the four groups remains the same over the course of the study so that the group working only during summer always reported the highest self-esteem while the group working during school only always reported the lowest; see Table 1. Inspection of these means suggests that there may be a nonsignificant effect of working at Time 1 on self-esteem at Time 2 when the summer workers are separated into two longitudinal work patterns (summer only and both times). Indeed, students who worked during the summer (M = 4.8, SD = .8, n = 52) reported higher self-esteem during the school year than students who did not work the previous summer (M = 4.4, SD = 1.0, n = 73; F,,,,, =
6.04, p
O Psychological Reports 1992
SUMMER AND SCHOOL-TERM YOUTH EMPLOYMENT ECOLOGICAL A N D LONGITUDINAL ANALYSES ' PATRICK H . HARDESTY UniversiQ of huisville
AND
BARTON J. HIRSCH Northwestern University
Summary.-The effects of summer versus school-year employment on seu-esteem, peer relationships, and family social climate were investigated in a sample of 135 adolescents. Students were assessed the summer before entrance into high school and during the second semester of high school, using a longitudinal design. Cross-sectional findings indicated that, during the summer, 52 workers possessed higher self-esteem than 79 nonworkers. Longitudinal analysis indicated that 10 girls who worked only during the school term reported increases in both stress and activity with peen. At our final assessment, the families of 49 students who did not work at either time had become more conflicted and less cohesive than families of all other students. The dwelopmental implications of these results are discussed.
Work is a major role through much of life. Most Americans are introduced to this role in adolescence through summer jobs or part-time employment during the school year. Currently, about 80% of American youth wlll have held jobs before leaving high school (Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986). Assumption of this new role involves an ecological transition (cf. Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The work role needs to be integrated with relationships and social identities built around other social roles. For adolescents, some of their most important existing roles-academic, family, and friendship-can be very different in the summer from what they are during the school year. This suggests that adolescents may adapt quite differently to the work role in the summer than during the school year, although these have not been examined in previous research. Two potential differences in adaptation to summer versus school-term employment are of particular concern in the present study. The first issue regards the salience of the work role to the adolescent's self-esteem. Symbolic interactionists posit that self-concept is based on social roles (e.g., Stryker, 1980). Self-esteem is based on evaluation of role performance and roles which are more central to self-concept have the greatest potential effect on self-esteem. The process of incorporating new roles into the self-concept can be problematic. High school students beginning paid em'This article is based on a dissertation presented to Northwestern University by P H . Hardesty under the direction of B. J. Hirsch. We are graceful to John Crites and James Rosenbaum for their comments on an earlier draft. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented dt the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, August, 1959 Funding for this research was provided via a New Investigator Research Award in Prevcnt~onFrom the National Institute of Mental Health to Barton J. Hirsch, who is currently supported m part by the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. Correspondence should be addressed to either Patrick H. Hardesty, Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292 or Barton J. Hirsch, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
596
I? H. HARDESTY
&
B. J. HIRSCH
ployment must balance work with school, with academic demands often of higher priority. Managing multiple roles is not an easy task. Working students are less satisfied with school, spend less time on homework, and are less involved in extracurricular activities (Steinberg, Greenberger, Garduque, Ruggiero, & Vaux, 1982). Although most workers perform as well as nonworkers academically, in some studies (e.g., Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986), though not all (D'Amico, 1984; Schill, McCartin, & Meyer, 1985), academic performance declines when students work more than 15 or 20 hours/week. Only one study has directly examined the relation between working and selfesteem during the school term. Steinberg and Dornbusch (1991) reported that students who worked the most hours outside of school reported the lowest self-esteem. They also had the poorest school performance, even when controlling for orientation toward school. If competing demands from school are likely to constrain positive contributions of worlung to self-esteem, these factors should be less prevalent in summer than school-year jobs. In the summer, adolescents either do not go to school, so that the student role does not compete with the work role, or they generally take lighter academic loads, which also should reduce role conflict. Summer jobs may provide greater opportunity for enhancement of selfesteem than school-year jobs. However, no prior study has tested whether summer jobs differ from school-year jobs in their relation to self-esteem. The second major focus of our research was on how the work role is integrated with family and friendships. Working youth are immersed in new environments and roles, which may alter their emerging identities and their perspective on family and friendship relationships. They also have greater financial resources but less available time. Worlung may enrich relationships as well as introduce new sources of stress. These issues have only begun to be addressed empirically and findings are inconclusive. In the family sphere, some studies showed no effect of working on involvement with family or quality of family relationships (Steinberg, et al., 1982; Steinberg & Dornbusch, 1991), while others indicated workers to be less involved with family members (Greenberger, Steinberg, Vaux, & McAuliffe, 1980). Worktng was associated with less dependence by adolescent boys on their parents in one study (Gottfredson, 1985). However, Steinberg, et al. (1982) found working girls to be more self-reliant and working boys less so than their nonworking peers. The latter study also indicated that as the number of hours worked increased, family closeness increased for boys and decreased for girls (Steinberg, et al., 1982), suggesting the importance of examining possible gender differences. Data on the relation of working to peer ties are even more sparse. Working did not affect time spent with peers or the quality of peer relationships in general (Greenberger, et al., 1980).
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
597
Several limitations of this earlier research should be noted. Most of the findings come from a single research project in Orange County, California (Greenberger, et a[., 1980). Several inconsistent results are from this project, reflecting differences in cross-sectional versus longitudinal analyses, the interpretation of which is not always clear. The longitudinal design in that research also has some limitations. The two groups compared were those who were not working at any time versus those who did not work at Time 1 but then were working at the follow-up. This did not permit analyses of the effects of working at both times or of working at Time 1 and then not working at Time 2 . Such additional contrasts would help to clarify possible developmental processes. Prior studies on the relation of employment to family and peer relationships have also focused exclusively on school-term employment. Summer jobs may have considerably different effects on family and friendship ties. Parents may be more likely to endorse summer jobs because they do not detract from academics, still leave time available for other pursuits, and diminish unsupervised time in the home if both parents work. O n the other hand, teenage employment responsibilities may make planning family vacations more difficult. Friendships may more easily accommodate summer jobs given the substantial unstructured time still available. However, problems would confront friendships that revolved around shared school experiences. The present research examines both summer and school-term employment in a longitudinal design. Students are assessed during the course of the transition from junior high to high school. For many students, beginning paid employment outside the home is an important element of the developmental changes marked by this school change. This is an excellent time in which to examine the environmental context of early work experiences. This study had three principal goals. First, we compared the effects of summer and school-term employment on self-esteem. Given the absence of prior research on summer jobs, we were especially concerned with the hypothesis that working would be associated with higher self-esteem during the summer. Second, we examined how summer and school-term employment bears on family and peer relationships. Our prior discussion suggested that the work role may be more easily managed vis A vis other roles during the summer. In addition, theory and research with adults suggests that women encounter more stress in managing multiple-role involvements than do men (Hirsch & Rapkin, 1986). We consider whether this gender pattern is manifest at initial involvement in the work role. Finally, we consider the longitudinal relation of summer and school-term jobs to self-esteem, f a d y relationships, and friendships. Four longitudinal employment patterns are analyzed based on whether students did or did not work during the summer and school-year. This phase of the research involves a more exploratory examination of potential developmental processes.
598
l? H. HARDESTY & B. J. HIRSCH
METHOD Design and Sample Students were assessed twice in a longitudinal design. The first assessment was in the summer during the transition from junior h g h (Grade 9) to high school (Grade 10); the second assessment was during the spring of Grade 10. The sample of 135 students (boys = 65, girls = 70) were two successive cohorts. The first group included 53 students and the second cohort 82; the subject pool in each year was about 325. As part of a larger project, students were selected in a 2 x 2 design based on measures of family and peer support utilizing essentially a median split on those measures. Students were from a midwestern town of approximately 100,000. At Time 1, the summer preceding high school, most of the adolescents were fourteen or fifteen years old (M = 14.8, SD = .42). Fifteen black students participated in the study, representing 11% of the sample. Because the number was small, separate analyses for race were not conducted. Inslruments Self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965).-This is a frequently used 10-item self-report scale with statistical data supporting its reliability and v d d i t y . Although items on this instrument are typically answered on a 4-point scale, a 6-point scale was used in thls study for two reasons. The first reason is logistical, as the scale was presented with another scale using a 6-point format, and this choice allowed a consistent presentation. The second is methodological, to try to minimize the ceding effects sometimes encountered. Subjects' scores were the mean of all items answered and so had a possible range of 1 to 6. The Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1986).-The Family Environment Scale, a self-report measure of the family social climate, is a 90item scale, nine items for each of 10 subscales: cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, independence, achievement orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, active recreational orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization, and control. The subscales have good internal reliability and have been extensively related to psychological outcomes among diverse populations, including adolescents. After reverse scoring the appropriate items, all items scored in the keyed direction were summed to obtain students' scores on each scale. Scores could range from 0 to 9. Peer friendships.-Self-report friendship data were collected during individual interviews. Adolescents reported up to six friends who were significant in their lives. Three peer-related variables were then assessed. The first of these is the variable activity. This is the number of activities engaged in with the six identified friends. This scale has five items: had gone shopping, had gone to movies, had participated in nonspectator sports, had gone to parties or dances, and had gone out on dates together. Items were scored as
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
599
1 if not endorsed and 2 if endorsed. The total scale score was the mean of
all items for all friends; scores could range from 1 to 2. The second, confidence, is the amount of confidence shared with the friends. I t consists of five items: talk about very private or personal concerns, talk about personal matters concerning the subject's family, talk of personal matters regarding the friend's family, talk about the opposite sex, and talk about ideas. Items were scored from 1 to 3 depending on the reported frequency of each activity. Scale scores were the mean of all items for all friends and potential scores ranged from 1 to 3 . The third variable is stress, which is composed of four items: had been in conflict, had not seen friend for a long time, sometimes cannot trust friend, and separated by geographical distance. The conflict item was scored 1 to 3 representing no conflict, minor conflict, and major conflict. The other items were scored 1 or 2. Scale score was the mean of all items and could range from 1 to 2.25. I n previous research (Hirsch & Reischl, 1985) internal consistencies (Cronbach alpha) for the three scales were .64, .69, and .31, respectively. The low internal consistency of the stress scale results from the scale being a composite of four unrelated social situations that could be sources of stress within adolescent relationships. I t was not expected that one source of stress would necessarily be accompanied by the other sources of stress. Socioeconomic status.-The socioeconomic status of each student was estimated in accordance with the work of Stevens and Featherman (1981), an updated version of Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, based on the students' report of ~ a r e n t a occupation. l The higher occupation of either the mother or father was used as the student's index of socioeconomic status. There was considerable variation, with scores ranging from 13 to 87 (M = 52.1, SD = 22.0). Potential scores range from 11.1 to 88.7. Work status.-At each time, students were asked whether or not they worked, to estimate the number of hours worked per week, and what type of work they did. Hours worked in the summer ranged from 1 to 60 hours per week (M = 18.25, SD = 16.28, n = 49). For the school year, hours worked per week ranged from 1 to 32 (A4 = 13.67, SD = 7.92, n = 47). The most frequently reported summer jobs were mowing (n = 8), paper routes (7), babysitting (3), and restaurantlfast-food jobs (3). During the school year, the most prevalent job was restaurantlfast-food worker (n = 12), followed by paper routes (4), and mowing (4). Procedure Students were selected based on questionnaire measures of family and peer support administered during ~ r a d e9 (junior high). The assessments of the subjects comprising the final sample were made the summer before Grade 10, w h c h is the beginning of high school in this school system, and again at the end of the second semester of high school. At each time, stu-
600
l? H. HARDESTY & B. J. HIRSCH
dents were mailed the questionnaires which were completed prior to an interview. All interviews of one to two hours took place at home or in a university office. Subjects were paid for their participation.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were completed for each of the domains under study. The cross-sectional analyses explored differences between workers and nonworkers for each of the two time periods of the study, summer and school year. The longitudinal component of the study d o w e d analysis of the relation of employment patterns to changes in self-esteem, peer relationships, and family ties. Multivariate covariate analyses were employed for each domain; Time 1 data were entered as covariates to adjust for Time 2 results. Data for 125 subjects were available for the longitudinal analyses in which were compared four groups of students defined by pattern of employment. One group of students did not work at either time (18 boys and 31 girls). A second group worked only during the summer and was comprised of 12 boys and 12 girls. The third group did not work in the summer but did work during the second semester of high school (14 boys and 10 girls). Lastly, there were 16 boys and 12 girls who worked both during the summer and-while in school. Membership in any of the four work pattern groups was unrelated to socioeconomic status and gender. ~
Self-esteem Cross-sectional analysis of Time 1 data, during the summer, gave a significant effect of working on self-esteem (F,,,,, = 8.26, p < 0.005). Workers (M = 4.7, SD = 1.0, n = 52) reported higher self-esteem than nonworkers (M = 4.3, SD = .8, n = 79). The increased self-esteem of workers was unrelated to socioeconomic status. There were no significant differences in self-esteem associated with working versus not working at Time 2, during the school year. The longitudinal analyses for the four .employment patterns did not yield significant effects. The relative ranking among the four groups remains the same over the course of the study so that the group working only during summer always reported the highest self-esteem while the group working during school only always reported the lowest; see Table 1. Inspection of these means suggests that there may be a nonsignificant effect of working at Time 1 on self-esteem at Time 2 when the summer workers are separated into two longitudinal work patterns (summer only and both times). Indeed, students who worked during the summer (M = 4.8, SD = .8, n = 52) reported higher self-esteem during the school year than students who did not work the previous summer (M = 4.4, SD = 1.0, n = 73; F,,,,, =
6.04, p
