Abstract
Policy recommendations that adolescents supplement school with work experience have been made in the absence of objective data on the nature of most adolescents' job activities. A coding system is presented for chronicling several microbehaviors in sequence, as they occur in adolescent job environments. The following three elements of approximately 100 behaviors performed by targeted teenage workers (N = 97) are recorded over a 2-hour period by an on-site observer: (1) social context; (2) character of the behavior (eg, critical, instructional); & (3) duration & concomitants of the behavior, when appropriate. In addition to its applicability in research on the effects of working on adolescent development, information obtained using the code can aid in the evaluation of youth employment programs, vocational counseling, & the validation of subjective worker reports of job attributes. 3 Tables. Modified AA.