Extracurricular involvement and psychological adjustment in the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood: The role of mastery and creative self-efficacy

A minimal amount is known regarding the mechanisms underlying the potential benefits of extracurricular activities (ECAs) for adolescents’ psychological adjustment. This preliminary cross-sectional study, during which 512 undergraduates retrospectively reported information about high school ECAs, used structural equation modeling to show that feelings of mastery and creative self-efficacy partially explained relationships between past ECA involvement and current psychological adjustment (depression, anxiety, and well-being) as well as creative achievement, though results varied according to the type of ECAs examined. These findings support the importance of studying the specific processes that may account for the benefits of extracurricular involvement within and across activity domains. Future studies using longitudinal designs are needed to assess the causal nature of these findings.