Hometown Roles in Adulthood

Hometown Role in Adulthood The purpose of this study is to examine which early childhood factors, such as siblingship size and hometown population, are associated with high levels of social confidence and independence in adulthood. Siblingship size will be determined by the number of children that came from the participant’s biological mother. Hometown population size will be found from tailored demographic questions. A person with high independence would demonstrate high comfortability doing daily life tasks alone. Their support systems and how they feel about them will also give us a scale for their level of independence. Social confidence is the feeling of being comfortable and sure of yourself when interacting with others. Our first hypothesis is that growing up in a densely populated town will encourage high levels of independence in adulthood. Although extensive research has examined differences between rural and urban areas, less is known about the specific characteristics of where people live and differences in personality over time. Our second hypothesis is that individuals who grew up in a small-population town will report high levels of self-confidence in adulthood. Previous research has examined independence in adulthood and individuals’ relationships with their hometowns; few studies have examined the association between the two. Other findings have demonstrated that characteristics of an individual’s living and social environment, including population and rurality, may be associated with psychological characteristics in adulthood. We hypothesize that individuals who grow up without siblings will report high levels of self-confidence and independence. We predict that a strong indicator of who a person may become in adulthood is siblingship size, along with their hometown population during childhood. Our study uses a survey with specific scales to measure our independent variables. This study has been approved by the Murray State University IRB, and participants will include MSU students. Data is currently being collected on this survey. Keywords: Independence, social confidence, siblingship size, adulthood, and hometown population