IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v47y1998i10p1407-1418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health related behavioural change in context: young people in transition

Author

Listed:
  • Pavis, Stephen
  • Cunningham-Burley, Sarah
  • Amos, Amanda

Abstract

Post-modern theorists have highlighted the impacts of rapid social and economic change in lessening structural constraints, arguing that the concepts of "gender" and "social class" are now less useful in understanding people's life chances and choices. While the epochal nature of such changes has been questioned, increasing levels of individualisation and reflexivity have been widely recognised. Agency is prioritised and structural disembeddedness increasingly assumed: people are held to construct their identities and biographies reflexively from a diverse range of experiences and opportunities. When used in relation to understanding health related behaviours this theorising has led to an increasing focus upon the symbolic significance of consumption (and indeed risk) in defining lifestyles and identities. Here we report on the health related behaviours of 106 young people (15/16Â yr) during their transition from school to employment, training or further education. This period is arguably central in the process of creating adult identities and accordingly should involve considerable lifestyle choice, reflexivity and symbolic consumption as identitities are formed. By drawing on two rounds of data (semi-structured interviews and structured questionnaires) we consider how smoking and drinking behaviours related to the wider social transitions towards adulthood. We provide a situated account of health related behaviours which acknowledges both subjective experience and social location. We argue that the current challenge is to integrate the different levels of structural constraint and individual agency within the context of current rapid social and economic change and suggest that it is only through empirical investigation which embraces an analysis both at the level of structure and individual experience that the conditions of late modernity can be more thoroughly understood.

Suggested Citation

  • Pavis, Stephen & Cunningham-Burley, Sarah & Amos, Amanda, 1998. "Health related behavioural change in context: young people in transition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(10), pages 1407-1418, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:10:p:1407-1418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(98)00257-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christiane Stock & Satayesh Lavasani Kjær & Birthe Marie Rasmussen & Lotte Vallentin-Holbech, 2020. "Youth Experiences with Social Norms Feedback: Qualitative Findings from The Drug Prevention Trial the GOOD Life," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-13, May.
    2. Stephen Pavis & Gill Hubbard & Stephen Platt, 2001. "Young People in Rural Areas: Socially Excluded or Not?," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 15(2), pages 291-309, June.
    3. Green, Michael J. & Leyland, Alastair H. & Sweeting, Helen & Benzeval, Michaela, 2017. "Causal effects of transitions to adult roles on early adult smoking and drinking: Evidence from three cohorts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 193-202.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:10:p:1407-1418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.