How People in Generations X, Y, and Z Generate Direction and Meaning as External Sources of Authority Weaken
This qualitative, interdisciplinary PhD project asks one central question: How do people in Generations X, Y, and Z generate direction and meaning as external sources of authority weaken under conditions of sustained uncertainty? It examines this question across Generations X, Y, and Z. The project responds to a contemporary environment in which AI-driven labour-market change, synthetic media, information overload, geopolitical instability, and insecure institutions unsettle expectations about work, relationships, mobility, identity, and the future. In this study, human navigation denotes the ongoing process through which people interpret conditions, assess possible paths, draw on or reject guidance, act, revise, and make sense of their lives. The project therefore asks how an actionable sense of direction becomes possible when no single authority can reliably tell people what to do.1
Rather than determine whether life choices are objectively correct, the dissertation examines how people establish enough legitimacy, agency, and meaning to move forward. Major life decisions are consequential choices — or prolonged non-choices — with material, relational, or identity implications, including work, education, partnership, caregiving, migration, housing, health, and belonging. Agency is not unrestricted autonomy; it is the situated and relational capacity to formulate aims, mobilise resources, act, defer action strategically, and revise a course within structural constraints. The project brings sociology, social psychology, adult development, narrative identity, agency theory, and STS together to examine how authority, relationships, self-authorship, and social technologies become resources for direction and meaning.2
Methodologically, the dissertation is a five-chapter, sequential qualitative project. It maps external authority historically; uses cross-generational interviews about concrete life decisions; analyses situated agency and self-trust through grounded theory; examines identity through narrative analysis; and integrates the findings into a Human Navigation or Human Compass Model. It treats generations as historically situated cohorts rather than fixed personality types, allowing the study to examine both shared uncertainty and differences in the authority regimes people inherit.
The project is feasible as a four-year dissertation because one coherent core dataset serves multiple analytic layers. A target of 42 interviews, with an allowable range of 30–50, is justified by information power and meaning saturation rather than statistical representativeness. The intended outputs are a dissertation, three to four publishable articles, and a transferable conceptual tool for mapping how direction, meaning, and agency are generated, negotiated, and revised across generations under prolonged uncertainty.3
This dissertation investigates how people in Generations X, Y, and Z generate direction and meaning as external sources of authority weaken under conditions of sustained uncertainty. It is situated amid accelerated technological change, AI-driven labour-market volatility, synthetic media, social-media information overload, and geopolitical instability. Rather than asking which life decision is "right," the study asks how people form a viable orientation when family, religion, stable professions, national narratives, education, and institutional expertise become pluralised, contested, or less binding. Human navigation is defined as the recurrent process of sense-making, evaluating alternatives, consulting or resisting guidance, acting, revising, and integrating choices into a life story. Major life decisions are consequential choices — or prolonged non-choices — with material, relational, or identity implications. Agency is the situated and relational capacity to formulate aims, mobilise resources, act, defer action, and revise direction within structural constraints. Drawing on late-modern social theory, adult development, narrative identity, agency theory, and STS, the project combines a historical-theoretical review with cross-generational, semi-structured interviews, reflexive thematic analysis, constructivist grounded theory, and narrative analysis. The empirical core will include approximately 42 participants, within a range of 30–50, across Generations X, Y, and Z and contrasting national contexts. The anticipated contribution is an intergenerational Human Navigation Model explaining how direction and meaning are made, inherited, contested, and revised as external sources of authority weaken.
The rationale for this dissertation is empirical, theoretical, and timely. The contemporary decision environment combines technological change, AI-driven occupational reorganisation, cost-of-living pressures, conflict, and mobility in ways that make inherited paths less reliable. Across generations, these pressures are encountered at different life stages and against different histories of institutional trust, labour-market entry, and family expectation. The World Economic Forum's 2025 labour-market reporting identifies technological change, AI, geoeconomic fragmentation, and economic pressures as major drivers reshaping jobs and skills through the next decade; IMF and ILO reporting likewise highlights broad but uneven labour-market exposure, including gendered effects.4
The epistemic environment is also changing. UN reporting in 2025 called for stronger global measures against AI-generated deepfakes and broader content-authentication standards. Recent empirical work on speech deepfakes suggests a "skepticism shift": exposure to convincing synthetic speech does not simply increase vulnerability to false content; it can also reduce willingness to trust authentic speech. UNESCO-associated reporting likewise emphasizes that AI-generated falsification and hallucination can damage historical knowledge, public trust, and the authority of evidence itself. The question is therefore not only whether people are misinformed, but how they sustain judgement and direction when the boundary between signal and noise becomes unstable.5
War and forced displacement intensify this background. Although UNHCR reporting in 2026 notes a slight decline in displacement in 2025, total forced displacement remains historically high, with tens of millions displaced internally and across borders. Major life decisions are increasingly made under instability, relocation, interrupted careers, shifting borders, and insecure institutions — pressures experienced unevenly across generations and social positions.6
Theoretically, this project stands on a strong foundation. Beck, Giddens, and Bauman show how late-modern individuals increasingly construct biographies under unstable conditions. Rather than assume that authority simply disappears, the project examines how family, religion, professional expertise, the state, education, media, online communities, platforms, and the self make overlapping or competing claims to legitimate guidance. Kegan and Baxter Magolda illuminate internally generated meaning, McAdams explains narrated continuity, and agency theory treats action as embedded in past habits, imagined futures, and practical judgement in the present.7, 26
This dissertation addresses a substantive gap. Existing literatures on risk, identity, careers, adult development, agency, and misinformation do not yet provide an integrated, intergenerational account of how ordinary people generate direction and meaning when uncertainty is chronic and external sources of authority cannot decide on their behalf. The study does more than compare cohorts. It examines authority as a process of transmission: the norms, models of a worthwhile life, and relations of trust that people inherit from families and institutions; the ways they adapt, contest, or abandon them; and the orientations they may transmit onward. This makes it possible to analyse continuity, rupture, and revision across generations rather than treating generations as isolated categories.
This question focuses on direction and meaning rather than metaphysical certainty or objectively "correct" outcomes. Direction is a provisional but actionable orientation toward commitments and next steps; meaning is a felt and narrated sense that these commitments are worthwhile and coherent. Human navigation is the recurrent process of interpreting conditions, assessing alternatives, consulting or resisting guidance, acting, revising, and integrating choices into a life story. A major life decision is a consequential choice — or prolonged non-choice — with material, relational, or identity implications. External sources of authority are recognised sources of guidance and legitimacy located beyond the individual, including family, religion, professions, the state, education, media, and communities; the study examines their weakening or reconfiguration rather than assuming their disappearance. Agency is the situated and relational capacity to formulate aims, mobilise resources, act, defer action strategically, or revise a course within constraint.
Chapter QuestionsThe five chapter questions operationalise the central question at the levels of authority, decision environments, situated agency, identity, and intergenerational mechanisms:
How have external sources of authority and authority scripts been reconfigured across generations?
How do sustained uncertainty and information environments shape how people generate direction and meaning in major life decisions?
How do people exercise agency within structural constraints when external sources of authority are no longer decisive?
How do people construct and revise identity in relation to inherited and contested authority scripts?
Which intergenerational mechanisms enable people to generate and sustain direction and meaning as external sources of authority weaken under conditions of sustained uncertainty?
The project has four linked aims. First, it maps how external sources of authority are weakened, pluralised, reconfigured, and transmitted across institutions, communities, media systems, and the self. Second, it identifies cross-generational similarities and differences in how people generate direction and meaning around work, relationships, mobility, study, care, and identity. Third, it explains how people exercise situated agency under uncertainty. Fourth, it produces an integrative Human Navigation Model linking authority, information environments, agency, identity, relationships, and meaning-making across generations. The project also asks how these resources are socially distributed, rather than assuming that they are equally available to everyone.
Analytic ScopeGenerational boundaries will follow Pew's definitions: Generation X (1965–1980), Generation Y or Millennials (1981–1996), and Generation Z (1997–2012); only adult members of Generation Z will be recruited. Generations are treated as historically situated positions rather than fixed essences. The intergenerational contribution is to compare cohorts socialised under different authority regimes and to elicit which authority scripts — norms and expectations about legitimate life paths — participants inherited, revised, rejected, or expect to transmit. Comparisons will attend to the historical conditions in which cohorts entered adulthood, including shifts in work, media, family norms, and institutional trust. The design does not statistically disentangle age, cohort, and period effects.8
The dissertation is designed as a sequential, multi-stage qualitative study. Its logic is cumulative. Chapter one maps the transformation and reconfiguration of external authority; chapter two traces how sustained uncertainty and information environments enter concrete decisions; chapter three examines situated agency and self-trust; chapter four analyses identity and inherited authority scripts; and chapter five integrates the findings into a model of direction and meaning. This design is appropriate because the phenomenon concerns meaning-making, legitimacy, interpretation, memory, relationships, and self-formation rather than observable behaviour alone. Reflexive thematic analysis identifies patterned meaning across accounts; constructivist grounded theory generates theory from participants' perspectives; and narrative analysis attends to turning points, temporal sequencing, and narrated identity. A 30–50 interview core sample is justified by information power and meaning saturation rather than statistical representativeness.9
| Chapter | Main data | Sample and recruitment | Instruments | Analysis | Planned output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ch. 1: Authority | Historical, theoretical, policy, and media texts; selected institutional documents, 1980–2026 | No participant sample | Structured review protocol; authority-source and transmission frame | Historical-theoretical review, interpretive synthesis, and conceptual mapping | Map of authority change, fragmentation, redistribution, and intergenerational transmission |
| Ch. 2: Direction | Semi-structured interviews; decision timelines; field notes; participant-created authority and meaning maps | Core sample of 30–50 adults across Generations X, Y, and Z and contrasting countries | Interview guide on major decisions, uncertainty, information sources, guidance, direction, constraints, and action | Reflexive thematic analysis | Cross-generational patterns of overload, filtering, delay, experimentation, and direction |
| Ch. 3: Agency | Subset of core interviews plus theoretical-sampling additions if needed | Core interview pool with targeted follow-up of participants who faced consequential decisions under uncertainty | Prompts on aims, internal criteria, constraints, relational support, action, strategic delay, delegation, revision, and self-trust | Constructivist grounded theory with constant comparison and memoing | Middle-range theory of situated agency and provisional self-trust under uncertainty |
| Ch. 4: Identity | Life-story segments from interviews; turning-point and inherited-script narratives | Same core sample, with emphasis on participants who experienced identity shifts | Life-story prompts, turning-point elicitation, inherited-script prompts, and future-self prompts | Narrative analysis of temporal structure, key scenes, identity claims, and plot forms | Narrative account of identity adaptation and authority-script revision |
| Ch. 5: Integration | Integrated findings from prior chapters; analytic memos; concept maps | No new core sample required | Cross-chapter synthesis protocol and model-building memos | Integrative synthesis and abductive theorisation | Intergenerational Human Navigation Model |
The recruitment strategy is purposive, comparative, and intergenerational rather than statistically representative. It seeks variation across generations, countries, decision types, and socio-technical contexts, including authority scripts described as inherited, revised, or rejected. Access points include professional and alumni networks, online communities, migration and reskilling groups, entrepreneurship forums, and social-media calls for participation. Interviews will be conducted primarily in English and Hebrew.
| Generation | Country | Target n | Priority decision types |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generation X | Israel | 4 | late-career adaptation, caregiving/family, relocation under insecurity |
| Portugal | 3 | migration, late-career reinvention, partnership and place | |
| United Kingdom | 3 | redundancy/reskilling, caregiving, divorce/repartnering | |
| United States | 4 | entrepreneurship, relocation, work displacement | |
| Generation Y | Israel | 4 | career pivot, upskilling, family formation, migration |
| Portugal | 4 | mobility, freelance or startup work, relationship decisions | |
| United Kingdom | 3 | burnout and reorientation, housing/family, retraining | |
| United States | 4 | graduate study or retraining, entrepreneurship, tech-work uncertainty | |
| Generation Z | Israel | 3 | education-to-work transition, post-conflict uncertainty, identity |
| Portugal | 3 | study-work mobility, precarious work, belonging | |
| United Kingdom | 3 | first-job uncertainty, AI anxiety, identity experimentation | |
| United States | 4 | degree value, entry-level job precarity, dating and identity |
Total target sample: 42 interviews. This matrix is a target rather than a rigid quota system. If access conditions change, country cells may be adjusted while preserving the four core comparison axes: generation, decision type, socio-technical context, and relation to inherited authority scripts.
The empirical core will consist of semi-structured interviews of approximately 75–100 minutes. Each interview will include five components. The first elicits one to three major life decisions made or actively confronted in the past five years. The second reconstructs the process chronologically: uncertainty, information gathering, consultation, turning points, delay, action, and aftermath. The third uses an authority-source map, in which participants identify which sources of guidance they inherited, relied on, rejected, distrusted, or combined. The fourth examines agency through prompts about aims, constraints, available resources, relational support, action, strategic delay, delegation, and revision. The fifth uses life-story prompts to explore identity, meaning, and the authority scripts participants may retain, revise, or hope to transmit. Each interview situates the decision within its social and institutional context rather than treating it as a purely private choice.
A pilot stage will precede the full study. Four to six interviews will test the definitions of navigation, major life decisions, and agency; refine wording, temporal prompts, cross-generational comprehensibility, and the authority-mapping instrument; and test the intergenerational prompts. Pilot data may later be included if methodologically sound and ethically approved.
Chapter one will use a structured historical-theoretical review of late-modernity, agency and self-authorship literature, narrative-identity work, and selected policy and media texts from 1980–2026. Its goal is an interpretive map of the move from prescribed life scripts toward plural, contested, and reflexive sources of direction. The review will examine the reconfiguration of external authority across family, institutions, expertise, media, and platforms, as well as the shifting authority scripts transmitted across generations.
Chapter two will use reflexive thematic analysis. Coding will move from immersive reading to initial coding, theme development, review, and analytical writing. Attention will focus on how sustained uncertainty and information environments shape the formation of direction and meaning: whether they delay action, decentralise expertise, produce selective filtering, generate "micro-certainties," or increase experimentation. The unit of interest is not only what participants decide, but how decision environments reorganise the process of deciding.10
Chapter three will use constructivist grounded theory to generate theory about agency when external sources of authority are no longer decisive. Agency is treated as the situated capacity to formulate aims, mobilise resources and relationships, act, defer action strategically, delegate, or revise within constraint. Constant comparison, memoing, focused coding, and theoretical sampling will identify movement toward provisional self-trust, limited action, delegated action, or paralysis. The chapter will distinguish between feeling able to choose, having resources to act, and being able to revise a course after consequences become visible.11, 26
Chapter four will use narrative analysis. Interviews will be re-read for formative scenes, turning points, continuity strategies, moral vocabularies, future orientation, and inherited or revised authority scripts. The chapter asks how people construct and revise identity in relation to inherited expectations about legitimate life paths, and whether coherence is produced through redemption, experimentation, rupture, irony, or suspension. McAdams and Riessman provide the main conceptual anchors.12
Chapter five will integrate the findings abductively. The expected product is a model of the intergenerational mechanisms through which people generate and sustain direction and meaning as external sources of authority weaken under conditions of sustained uncertainty. Candidate domains include reconfigured authority, information filtering, situated agency and self-trust, values, relational anchoring, experimentation, identity narration, intergenerational inheritance and revision, and meaning consolidation.
The project will undergo full institutional ethics review before fieldwork begins. All interviews will require written informed consent. Participants will be informed that they may stop the interview at any point, skip questions, or withdraw without penalty up to a clearly defined date. Data will be pseudonymized at transcription, with identifying details removed or masked. Because major life decisions may involve divorce, migration, work loss, war exposure, financial stress, or identity conflict, the interview guide will be designed to reduce coercion and avoid unnecessary intrusion. A distress protocol will be prepared, including pausing, redirecting, and providing referral information where appropriate.
The following timeline assumes a four-year doctoral schedule. It prioritizes early conceptual consolidation, timely ethics approval, concentrated fieldwork, and staggered analysis so that chapter writing begins before all interviewing is complete.
The principal output will be a dissertation ending in the Human Navigation or Human Compass Model. The model is expected to be relational, temporal, and intergenerational rather than linear. It will specify links among external sources of authority, information environments, situated agency, self-trust, values, relationships, experimentation, identity narration, and meaning. Its contribution is to avoid treating direction as a private trait: direction and meaning emerge through inherited scripts, structural constraints, social relationships, and self-authored commitments.13
A second output will be a set of publishable articles: one on the reconfiguration of external authority and intergenerational scripts; one on cross-generational direction-making under sustained uncertainty and information overload; one on situated agency, self-trust, and narrative identity; and one conceptual article on the Human Navigation Model. A third output could be a practical research tool consisting of the authority-source map, an agency-and-constraint interview module, and a methodological note on researching major decisions under chronic uncertainty.
The project is feasible for three reasons. First, the design is coherent: all empirical chapters draw from the same core interview corpus, reducing the burden of managing multiple unrelated datasets. Second, participant access is plausible through remote interviewing, network-based recruitment, and a multilingual but manageable language strategy centred on English and Hebrew. Third, the project is methodologically ambitious but not fragmented: each analytic step has a clear function and feeds the next.
There are important limitations. Generational categories are heuristics rather than ontological groups, and qualitative comparison cannot statistically separate age, cohort, and period effects. Retrospective interviews risk hindsight bias and narrative smoothing. Cross-country comparison adds language, class, and context asymmetries; the Portugal cell may skew toward mobile, educated English speakers. The study does not recruit matched parent-child dyads, so intergenerational claims about transmission are interpretive rather than causal.
| Department or program type | Why it fits this project |
|---|---|
| Sociology | Strong fit for authority, institutions, modernity, biography, and inequality |
| Social psychology | Strong fit for judgment, agency, identity, self-trust, and meaning-making |
| Science and Technology Studies | Strong fit for authority, expertise, digital media, AI, and epistemic change |
| Futures Studies | Strong fit for uncertainty, anticipatory action, and social navigation under rapid change |
| Interdisciplinary social-science programs | Strong fit if the institution supports mixed theory traditions and qualitative depth |
| Journal | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Sociology | Chapter one, chapter five |
| Theory, Culture & Society | Chapter one, chapter five |
| Social Studies of Science | Chapter one, chapter five |
| AI & Society | Chapter one, chapter two, chapter five |
| New Media & Society | Chapter two, chapter four |
| Information, Communication & Society | Chapter two |
| Journal of Adult Development | Chapter three, chapter four |
| Futures | Chapter five |
| Journal of Vocational Behavior / Career Development Quarterly | Chapter two, chapter three, if the emphasis shifts toward work and vocational choice |
The references below are grouped by priority. Each entry's bracketed number links to its full citation and URL at the bottom of the page.