Adolescent Interview Analysis

This assignment analyzes a conducted interview with a 14-year-old named John, exploring his personal development, challenges, and future aspirations. It delves into John's sense of identity during adolescence, his academic goals, family dynamics, and the strategies he seeks to improve himself. The analysis includes observations about John's communication style, non-verbal cues, and aspirations for becoming an accountant. Additionally, it outlines a treatment plan with specific short-term goals focusing on organization, concentration, and communication skills development.

Running Head: ADOLESCENT INTERVIEW
1
Adolescent Interview
Student’s Name
College
Course
Lecture’s Name
Date

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Adolescent Interview
Introduction
John is a fourteen-year-old eighth grade adolescent whom I interviewed. The interview
sought to understand the weaknesses that he has to help him improve. The information from the
interview will be used to assist him choose the right goals. John has three siblings, Mary, Jane,
and Junior, and comes from a widowed household. He is going through identity as he matures
out of adolescence thus seeking to discover his personal identity. He has to balance between
school work and home life while at the same time struggling to achieve his career dream of being
an accountant. The family set up presents some challenges since he lacks father’s support while
the mother struggles to meet family needs.
Summary of Findings and Interpretation
The nature that John presented himself gives characteristics of an adolescent from
dressing style to the way he responded to questions. He displayed adolescence and school-level
characteristics that can be highlighted in personal identity which arises in the need to discover
themselves and fit in their peer groups (Messersmith, Garrett, Davis-Kean, Malanchuk, &
Eccles, 2012). This is also seen in the sense of independence and testing of boundaries from self-
centered attitudes that John has developed by taking up the responsibility of the first born. The
identity and personal development has made him feel the need to improve his self and
personality to be able to fit in social groups and at the same time meet personal aspirations in
life. This stage of discovery creates passion and abilities like taking part in co-curricular
activities and the need to be popular which is seen in his effort to work well in school and
achieve better grades so that he can be rated among the top students. Further, he describes

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himself as being friendly and spending most of the time playing football with friends or
community work which is a characteristic that define people of his age.
Impression of the Interview Process
The setting of the interview was in a room that allowed only the two of us thus to allow
the interviewee to respond well. The beginning was sort of tensed since I had to probe deeper on
single word answers, but as we build rapport the client started opening up completely. He sat
comfortably during the interview and was using both verbal and non-verbal elements during the
conversation. He showed typical signs of somebody who was comfortable and speaking at will.
As the interview went on I compared the body language with the responses he gave to determine
the validity of responses. Most of the time, the two were related which gave me the impression
that he was giving me the right responses. He seemed to be an informed adolescent which may
due to being the first born in the family and helping the mother in taking care of his siblings. He
seemed to have a focused future and a clear career that he had chosen due to an assessment of his
personal abilities at school (Gottfredson & Becker, 2001). This age is a career awareness stage
where students can develop their career plans for their future.
Therapeutic Goals
John’s dream of improving in class to achieve his career dream, develop a better personality and
self will be achieved in one long-term goal (LTG) and three short-term goals (STG) that I will
develop to help him.
LTG: To assist John improve his academic performance in from 81% to 90% within one year.
STG 1: John will spend thirty minutes every day planning activities of the day to improve
organization through prioritization of work for three months.

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STG 2: John will improve his organization skill within six months through a personal coach who
will help in carrying out a basic training on how to organize work by breaking it down into small
chunks and working on one after the other.
STG 3: John will work on concentration skills through working on assignments from the coach
for three hours daily for nine months without interference from family members or using the
laptop and smart phone. This will be reinforced with one hour use of computer or smart phone.
Activities and Treatment Plan
Short Term Goal One:
John will spend thirty minutes developing a schedule of work and allocating time to each
activity. This will entail all the activities he will engage in the whole day including leisure time
for a period of three months. The role of the activity is to teach him how to allocate time to
activities based on strengths. I will assist him in determining the weight of an activity and how to
balance time between activities.
Short Term Goal Two:
John will undergo coaching to develop organization skills and enable him keep track of
important activities of the day and how to work on all of them. This will entail several activities
like brain games and crossword puzzles together with time management that will run for six
months.
Short Term goal Three:
John will work on math and physics tasks for todays a week for nine months, which will
be on Saturdays and Sundays. Each task time will be one and a half hours a day for each task
without any interference to help him improve concentration skills with a break of fifteen minutes
between two tasks for a period of nine months. This activity will be done on Saturday and

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Sunday then after the session, he will be allowed to play his favorite game on the laptop or smart
phone to juggle his mind. This will be used to help in balancing time between tasks.
Additional areas
From the interview, I will add development strategies for improving the self. Since John
is also seeking to improve in this area, the treatment plan will include communication skills and
referring him to a mentor who can help meet his career needs. Since the treatment plan focusses
on improving grades to achieve career aspirations, then a mentor will act as an image that John
will seek to emulate. Communication skills will be used to create a positive image that allows
easy interaction with others thus creating a better perception from others.

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References
Gottfredson, L. S., & Becker, H. J. (2001). A challenge to vocational psychology: How
important are aspirations in determining male career development? Journal of Vocational
Behavior, 18, 121-137.
Messersmith, E. E., Garrett, J. L., Davis-Kean, P. E., Malanchuk, O., & Eccles, J. S. (2012).
Career Development From Adolescence Through Emerging Adulthood Insights From
Information Technology Occupations. Journal of Adolescent Research, 23(2), 206–227.