Decline in positive future orientations among adolescents during covid-19: The role of socioeconomic status, parental support, and sense of control.

Introduction: Before coronavirus disease (covid-19), adolescents from a lower socioeconomic status (SES) background tend to have less positive future orientations, receive less parental support, and have a weaker sense of control than adolescents from a higher SES background. The covid-19 pandemic has potentially increased the socioeconomic gaps in positive future orientations, parental support, and sense of control among adolescents who are currently in vocational education. As societies are aiming to return back to precovid norms, certain groups of adolescents might require more attention for ensuring a stable future than others.

Methods: Two-wave questionnaire data of 689 Dutch adolescents (M  = 17.8; 56% female) from the Youth Got Talent project was analyzed. Latent Change Score models are a relatively novel approach that allows two-wave data to estimate associations between precovid predictor variables and changes in outcome variables from before to during covid-19 (e.g., SES, positive future orientations, parental support, and sense of control). Analyses were preregistered.

Results: The precovid socioeconomic differences in adolescent's positive future orientations and sense of control remained stable during covid-19, whereas the socioeconomic difference in parental support decreased during covid-19. A decline in parental support, an increase in sense of control, and more covid-19 hardships were associated with an increase in future orientations.

Conclusion: The covid-19 situation has not substantially increased socioeconomic differences in positive future orientations and sense of control, but did decrease socioeconomic differences in parental support among adolescents. Short-term policies should aim to facilitate parental support and positive future orientations to all adolescents who experienced a decline, while also long-term focusing on the more consistent socioeconomic difference in sense of control among adolescents.