"I Like a Bit of Their Knowledge More": Emerging Adults on Choosing Informational Support Sources

Abstract

This dissertation examines how emerging adults (EAs) in the United States and China select sources of informational support — advice, guidance, and practical knowledge — across three domains of adulthood: academic/vocational, romantic relational, and financial. Grounded in a sociocultural constructivist framework, the study employed a convergent mixed-methods design integrating a Hierarchical Card Sort (HCS) methodology, content coding of verbal quality explanations, reflexive thematic analysis, and correlational analysis of filial piety across 60 participants (30 Chinese, 30 US). Domain specificity emerged as the dominant organizing principle of EA advisory networks in both cultures: peers dominated romantic advisory networks, while adult authority figures predominated academically and financially, supporting a task-specificity model over a hierarchical-compensatory model. Parental authority in financial contexts was the strongest point of cross-cultural convergence; the most robust divergence was Chinese participants' broader reliance on classmate/work peers across all domains. Relationship Proximity was the dominant reasoning behind source selection across samples and domains, and multidimensional scaling revealed a culturally consistent Adult Authority versus Peer Closeness continuum, with US and Chinese participants differing in how they integrated social risk into that judgment. Thematic analysis identified four themes: (1) closeness and competence, with self-specificity—knowledge of the advisee’s circumstances and real self—distinguishing valued advisors; (2) trust as a multidimensional gate involving safety, confidentiality, and interest-alignment; (3) reluctance to seek advice and conditions enabling disclosure; and (4) age as a domain-contingent resource. Self-specificity represents a novel contribution to social support literature by explaining why technically sound advice from well-intentioned adults may go unheeded. Filial piety analyses revealed opposing cultural patterns: higher filial piety predicted greater parental reliance among US participants but lower adult-source utilization among Chinese participants, challenging prior trade-off models. Findings describe how EA advisory networks serve as the developmental medium through which adulthood is scaffolded, with romantic peer independence preceding financial peer independence in both cultures, and offer implications for parents, advisors, and educators supporting the transition to adulthood.