Real-Time Processes of Career Goal Construction : A Study Case Approach with Implications for the Development of Adolescents’ Identity

The study aimed at investigating how different young people going through the post-high school transition set, monitor, pursue, and renegotiate career goals in real-time and in everyday life circumstances. A theoretically driven proposition supported the conceptualization of career goals as complex dynamic systems and guided the examination and description of the moment-to-moment processes shaping the (re)construction of career goals. The study adopted an exploratory research approach and was based on a longitudinal case study design. Diary reports were collected for 39 weeks. Participants were four young people (three females, one male) who at the onset of the study were 18 years of age an…