Youth Independence As a Conceptual Framework for Youth Studies

Defining youth as the life stage and age of transition from childhood to adulthood independence (Furlong, 2013), the measurement of independence becomes pivotal theoretical, methodological and empirical concern. Throughout the development of youth studies, there have been many efforts to conceptualizing and measuring youth independence based on both theoretical discussions (Alwin, 1988) and empirical research (Manzoni, 2016). All these efforts aimed at defining and measuring the empirical indicators of the youth independence. In the scope of the youth studies, some scholars stress the importance of focusing on the specific domains for analysis of youth independence: notably, the following pivotal markers were suggested as a critical aspects of the independence concepts financial independence (Lee and Mortimer, 2009), leaving the parental home (White, 2002), cognitive independence (Johnson, Berg and Sirotzki, 2007). While some of the scholars seek to integrate all these dimensions in intricate conceptual framework, the others delve deeper by developing holistic set of indicators, that ensure the application of the conceptual domains for gauging youth independence. Additionally, some of practitioners and scholars pinpoint not only objective, but also subjective, socio-psychological aspects of the definition of the youth independence (Manzoni, 2016). Thus, the academic debate on the conceptualizing and defining main independence indicators is still open. The primary goal of the paper is to elaborate a cohesive measurement framework to enable comprehensive analysis of independence as an integral part of the youth concept. In the pursuit of this goal, this study aims to go beyond traditional measurement approach and employ a comprehensive set of indicators for gauging youth independence based on the insights gained from the rigorous sociological research, conducted among the youth population of Armenia. A comprehensive youth independence index has been elaborated, encompassing the following four essential components: financial independence, economic independence, mental independence, daily life independence.