In keeping with organismic principles and systems theory, this dissertation approaches the issue of youth activity participation from a developmental holistic interactionistic perspective that presupposes that individual lives are supported by a network of influences. By using a carefully balanced set of pattern- and variable-centered approaches to identify activity patterns that included a wide range of structured and unstructured extracurricular activities, we captured a more complete picture of adolescents' behavioral choices and time use across the middle- and late adolescent years, examined the factors that influence these time use behaviors, and their relation to developmental outcomes. The first study (Chapter II) showed that youth engage in complex patterns of multiple activities within and across time, and, at the population-level, there are common patterns in which adolescents organize their time. Furthermore, we found longitudinal structural stability for the majority of activity patterns observed. However, there were also shifts in what defined existing patterns, and the emergence of new patterns at each grade level. In Study 2, we examined individuals' continuous participation in particular out-of-school activity patterns over the middle-to-late adolescent years and its relation to multiple indicators of positive development, demonstrating that continuous participation in different combinations of organized and unorganized activities lead to both different short- and long-term developmental outcomes. Finally, in Study 3 we examined what gets youth involved in the out-of-school activity patterns that are related to positive development. Using a mixture of pattern-centered and variable-centered analyses we considered how activity choices involve reciprocal processes between the contextual constraints and opportunities for participation within the family, the school and the neighborhood, and adolescents' own motivations. By using a unique balance of pattern- and variable-centered methods to examine both, the environmental and person-related factors that influence youth's engagement in positive activities during adolescence, and the relation of activity pattern pathways on development, this dissertation serves as an important step towards gaining a deeper understanding the dynamic and complex relations of adolescents' activity participation and their positive development.Ph.D.Behavioral psychologyDevelopmental psychologyPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126341/2/3238130.pd
