Understanding Adolescent Identity Construction in the Context of Living with a Parent with an Acquired Brain Injury
Date
2018-04-30
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Abstract
Adolescent identity construction is complex. Despite decades of research revealing various understandings of identity, it is unclear how disruptive phenomena influence identity construction, particularly during adolescence. Therefore, when adult participants from my master’s thesis talked about becoming different people as a result of their adolescent experiences of living with a parent with an acquired brain injury (ABI), I wondered how the occurrence of such a phenomenon could change identities and self. This wondering inspired my doctoral research studies and led me to ask the following research question: How might we understand adolescent identity construction in the context of living with a parent with an ABI? To respond to this question, I used hermeneutic inquiry guided by Gadamer’s (1960/2004) philosophical hermeneutics. I recruited volunteers from the Calgary area through emails to ABI and counselling service providers, posters, news media interviews, social media advertisements, and snowball sampling. I obtained nine adult participants (three males, six females) aged 20 to 38 years, who were adolescents (i.e., 10 to 19 years of age) at the time their parent incurred an ABI. Participants engaged in a one- to two-hour audio-recorded interview that was then transcribed verbatim. Analysis and interpretation of the data included reviewing interview transcripts, listening to the recordings, journaling thoughts and questions inspired by the interviews, discussing preliminary thoughts with supervisory committee members, and consulting the literature to create an understanding of the topic. Through this process, I created six interpretations that revealed how we might understand adolescent identity construction in the context of living with a parent with an ABI. These interpretations included: (a) using normal as a guiding concept in identity construction, (b) remaking home environments to construct identities, (c) adopting and rejecting roles resulting from parental ABI, (d) experiencing trust and betrayal in social relationships, (e) being unrecognized and/or forgotten, and (f) silencing in identity construction. Following a presentation of these interpretations, I discuss my synthesized understanding and the implications of the findings for theory, practice, and research.
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adolescence, identity construction, narrative identity, acquired brain injury, hermeneutics, social construction
Citation
Freeman-Cruz, E. A. (2018). Understanding adolescent identity construction in the context of living with a parent with an acquired brain injury (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/31870