Recent research provides evidence that when young people are asked about the most important events in their lives, they primarily focus on positive daily milestones rather than major stressors. This research Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatrysuggesting that supporting these positive experiences may play an important role in promoting mental health in young people. The project is a collaboration between the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development and the Institute of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention at the University of Zurich.
Mental health research with young people has traditionally relied on rigorous checklists to track life events. These standard surveys typically ask participants to indicate whether they have experienced certain predefined situations. Questions often focus on negative or highly stressful events, such as physical trauma or death in the family.
Because professionals plan these studies in advance, they rarely capture young people’s spontaneous, lived experiences in their own words. Adolescence and young adulthood are periods defined by significant psychological and emotional development. During these years, people go through major life transitions, such as completing their education, getting a job, and moving away from their parents. Identifying the specific experiences that young people find most meaningful during this time can help professionals design better support systems.
Reading and sorting through thousands of written responses requires significant time and resources. Advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing offer new ways to solve this problem. Natural language processing is a type of computer technology that can analyze large amounts of text data and extract themes. The current study is one of the first large-scale, long-term studies in the world to use these tools to analyze young people’s open-ended responses.
The study’s lead author, Christina Haag, now at the University of Cambridge, pointed out the usefulness of this technical approach. “Our analysis shows how freely formulated responses from large-scale longitudinal studies can be processed in a way that provides a structured picture of young people’s experiences,” says Haag. “This allows us to leave their perspective visible in their own words.”
To gather these perspectives, the authors analyzed data from the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood. This project is a large-scale community study that follows a diverse group of individuals in Zurich, Switzerland. The study included 1,442 participants who provided open-ended text responses at various time points. Participants were surveyed when they were 15, 17, 20, and 24 years old.
At each assessment, participants answered one open-ended question about their lives. They were encouraged to reflect on the past few years and write down the single most important event they experienced. A total of 5,670 unique text descriptions were generated during the course of the study. The researchers also collected demographic information such as gender, socio-economic status, and whether participants had an immigrant family background.
To measure mental health, scientists assessed participants’ internalizing symptoms. Internalizing symptoms refer to feelings and behaviors that are turned inward, such as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Participants completed an eight-item questionnaire at each time point, reporting how often they had felt unhappy, fearful, or anxious over the past month.
To analyze the huge amount of text data, the scientists used a Python programming tool called BERTopic. The software uses natural language processing to group similar text responses into distinct topics. After the computer model generated the initial groupings, the researchers manually reviewed and adjusted the categories to ensure that the content was grouped correctly. They also trained another computer model to evaluate the emotional tone of each text segment to determine whether the event was positive, negative, or neutral.
The authors found that 83.1% of reported events were classified as emotionally positive. Most events were everyday, common experiences rather than unusual or extreme situations. The analysis identified 12 different topics, which the researchers divided into five broader categories. Education and career development accounted for 51.1% of responses, and social relationships accounted for 19.6%.
Leisure activities and success accounted for 12.4% of responses, mental health and well-being 11.2%, and other life transitions 5.7%. The four specific topics most frequently mentioned were related to school and education, romantic relationships and friendships, changes in mental health, and travel and vacations.
David Burgin, a clinical developmental psychologist at the University of Zurich and lead author of the study, emphasized the importance of these findings. “Our results show that the main component of young people is not crisis,” Burgin says. “Many young people primarily mention positive developmental steps, such as education, relationships, and personal accomplishments.”
This emphasis on positive milestones has practical applications for mental health professionals. Study co-leader Lily Shanahan from the University of Zurich added: “Support services should therefore not only focus on how to cope with stress; stable relationships, positive experiences and opportunities to experience self-efficacy are equally important.” Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her ability to succeed or achieve a goal.
The topics of these events changed markedly as the participants got older. Mentions of school and friendships were most important during mid-adolescence, but topics about work, housing, and having children continued to steadily increase into adolescence. In contrast, reports of sports and going out decreased as participants’ age increased. These changes correspond closely to the expected developmental milestones as teens transition to independent adulthood.
Sociodemographic factors showed some small associations with the type of event reported. For example, women were more likely than men to report events related to travel, family, loss, and marriage. Men were more likely to mention sports and vehicles. Participants with higher socio-economic status reported more travel-related events and fewer work-, family-, and car-related events.
Despite these slight demographic differences, the three most common topics were equally reported by all groups. The themes of education, friendships, and mental health did not vary by gender, income, or migration background. This suggests that the core milestones of young adulthood are widely shared experiences.
The researchers also observed a link between mental health symptoms and the types of events participants recalled. High levels of anxiety and depression make you more likely to report negative events, stressful life events, conflicts, losses, and personal failures. At the same time, participants with more internalizing symptoms were less likely to report positive experiences, such as success in school, work, or sports. This pattern provides evidence that mood can influence how individuals remember and evaluate past experiences.
There are several limitations to consider when interpreting these results. First, researchers do not fully understand the cognitive processes that prompt people to choose one event over another. A participant’s mood at the exact time of a study can have a significant impact on which memories come to mind. Additionally, participants were only asked to name one event, which may have omitted other meaningful experiences.
This study is also limited by its specific geographic and historical context. Data were collected in urban areas of Switzerland between 2013 and 2022. Some of the events reported were related to specific moments, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or specific pop music concerts. These very specific events do not necessarily generalize to populations in other regions or time periods.
Another limitation includes participant dropout over the 9-year follow-up period. Attrition in later stages of the study was slightly higher for men, young people from low-income households, and participants with immigrant backgrounds. Because study samples tend to become less diverse over time, this selective attrition can affect how well the findings represent the broader population.
Future research could build on this work by asking participants to list multiple events and rank them by importance. Scientists could also benefit from having individuals assess the emotional impact of their memories, rather than relying on computer models to assess tone. Integrating standard checklists and open-ended questions may provide a more comprehensive perspective on youth development. Continued use of text analysis tools can help professionals identify ways to promote positive experiences that improve well-being in adolescents and young adults.
The study, “Personally Meaningful Life Events from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Natural Language Processing Analysis,” was authored by David Bürgin, Christina Haag, Lynn Alison Büeler, Laura Bechtiger, Clarissa Janousch, Elena Feldmann, Denis Ribeaud, Manuel Aisner, Viktor von Wyl, and Lilly Shanahan.
