Adolescents' perceptions of and feelings about control and responsibility in their lives

This paper describes a hypothesis-generating study which merges a review of past conceptualizations and research (done mainly with children) with the results of a semistructured interview designed to distinguish between perceptions of control and responsibility in adolescents. Eight female and eight male freshmen and seniors from a middle-class high school in suburban Virginia were interviewed concerning their views and feelings of control and responsibility. They also rated themselves on a scale of 0 to 10 in eight areas of their lives on how much in control and how responsible they felt for things that happened in those areas and, in general, how satisfied they were with their lives. Pearson product-moment correlations showed that feelings of responsibility and control were highly correlated for this group, as were feelings of control and life satisfaction. Although the relationship between responsibility and life satisfaction was not significant for the total group, it was significant for the eight seniors. Students were further questioned concerning recent decisions they had made and who they felt had control over them and were responsible for them. In general, adolescents ascribed control and responsibility to the same source, but they seldom described shared control or responsibility. Implications for the development of social responsibility as well as future research are discussed.