DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

4. The person involved personally reflects on the period as one of crisis.
5. It must be considered a discrete episode in life that is over, rather than an acute
trauma event.
6. The episode must have found resolution at least a year ago, so that the person
is able to reflect on the developmental effects (or lack thereof) that have
occurred since the episode.
7. The onset of crisis must have occurred between the ages of 25 and 40. Early
adulthood lasts between 22 and 40, but the lower threshold of this age group
was raised to 25 in order to avoid those still in full-time university education.
8. The episode is not triggered by bereavement, illness, accident or other
uncontrollable events.
These case definition criteria are not overly specific, but it was hoped that by
allowing participants to define much of what they consider crisis episodes to be, a
clearer definition would emerge over the course of the research.
5.4 Participant Recruitment
Participants were recruited for the interviews from four sources. The first
source was group email within Birkbeck College; emails were circulated to
administrative staff in academic departments in humanities, arts and sciences, which
were then circulated to students. Birkbeck caters mainly for mature students doing
part-time degrees, which means that most students have passed through a substantial
part of early adulthood and many are in middle or late adulthood. There were
therefore a large number of potential participants for the study within the various
departments. Over the course of the three studies this recruitment strategy brought in
eight participants. Three participants were found this way for Study 1 (Camilla,
George, Jack) and five participants were recruited this way for Study 3 (Victoria,
Mark, Frank, Claire, Lilly).
Secondly, the psychology department at Birkbeck has a “participant panel”
email database. This is a resource of names and contact details of individuals who are
not part of the college but have registered their names as being interested in
participating in psychology studies. This brought in six participants: five individuals
in Study 1 (Angela, Violet, Dan, Lynne, Gemma) and one individual in Study 3
(Rob).
Departmental emails and participant panel emails read:
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