Junior high school students' psychological adaptation from the perspective of future orientation: Correlations with school adjustment and stress

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that adolescents’ perspectives and psychological adaptation are correlated. This study investigated differences in school adjustment and stress based on junior high school students’ type of future orientation. We surveyed junior high school students (N = 848) using the Future Orientation Scale developed by Yamagami and Sagara (2019). The results indicated the following five types of future orientations; “High future orientation,” “Family orientation,” “Decency-Family orientation,” “Low Decency-Rich orientation,” and “Low future orientation.” We examined the correlations between these future orientation types with school adjustment and stress. The results indicated that students with High future orientation and Decency-Family orientation types had higher school adjustment and less stress. In contrast, students with Low future orientation had the lowest school adjustment and highest stress. We also examined the effect of school adjustment on stress, which indicated the impact of learning adaptation on stress in all types of junior high school students. Learning adaptation had a strong effect on reducing stress, especially in the Low future orientation type with the least motivation and lowest interest in the future.