The Role of Repeated Narration in Identity Development: The Evaluation of the Transition to College Over Time

Repeated narration of key life events may illuminate processes of identity development, such as stagnation or growth. We employed a longitudinal mixed-methods design to investigate how college-attending emerging adults narrated their transition to college. Student participants (n = 638 at Wave 1) from two distinct universities in the US narrated the college transition experience annually across four years with developmentally tailored prompts, which were coded for prominent themes. Quantitative analyses suggested that connection to campus, connection to family, and overall evaluation of the college transition were experienced more positively than were experiences of mental health and marginalization. Of those participants who completed all four assessment waves, we also employed qualitative analyses of those who remained stable or who experienced a shift in their narrative evaluations of the transition. These results highlighted that repeated narration is associated with an increase in a reflective process that revealed a deeper understanding of the meaning of the transition, especially when reflecting on experiences with mental health and marginalization. We also observed the importance of master narratives about the college experience, and the prominence of campus connection in positive transition experiences. Implications include the importance of positive campus connections in mitigating potential challenges, the need for time and reflection to understand the meaning of momentous experiences, the role of challenging experiences in identity development, and the importance of attending to personal and structural processes in identity development.