Abstract (eng)
The present study was designed to investigate intercultural and gender differences
among youths regarding the concept of developmental tasks of adolescence by E.
Dreher and M. Dreher (1985a). For this investigation, an adapted version of the
established questionnaire by E. Dreher and M. Dreher (Fragebogen zu
Entwicklungsaufgaben im Jugendalter, 5. Fassung, 2009) was used as a research
instrument.
Male and female adolescents with and without migration background were compared
regarding subjective importance of, as well as active engagement and coping with,
the ten developmental tasks of adolescence. Thereby, several differences regarding
gender and culture were revealed.
It seems interesting that in the group of young migrants, girls tended to give more
priority to these tasks than boys, whereas the opposite was the case in the group of
adolescents without migration background. Regarding the variable ‘culture’ it could
be noticed that young migrants gave significantly more priority to the importance and
currency of the developmental tasks role, career, partnership/family, self and future.
Furthermore, they rated themselves as significantly more developed considering the
tasks relationship and partnership/family.
It may be possible to explain these differences within the context of an abbreviated
adolescence (verkürzte Adoleszenz), which occurs more often in migrants and in
families with lower socioeconomic status (Stiksrud & Wobit, 1985). This often leads
young people to feel the pressure to grow up earlier, so that there is only little time
left for a psychosocial moratorium in terms of exploring alternative lifestyles.
Therefore, developmental tasks which are strongly related to the future path of life
will sooner gain importance. However, because of an unfavourable age distribution in
the cultural comparison groups, it may also be possible that the age of the
participants was influenced the results.
Overall, it has to be mentioned that the results of this study reconfirm the validity of
the concept of developmental tasks of adolescence and that the ten developmental
tasks of adolescence are invariably of utmost relevance to youths.