Age Classifications of Young Adults With Chronic Illness: A Scoping Review

Background: Young adults living with chronic illness have unique and complex needs related to their life stage. Currently, little clarity exists on what constitutes young adulthood, and the needs of young adults are often treated as equivalent to those of other developmental groups, particularly adolescents. Purpose: To describe the impact of age classification as reported in research on young adults living with chronic illness. Methods: A scoping review was performed by the investigative team. EMBASE, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collection were used to identify articles that met specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Summary statistics were used to describe articles included in the review. Results: The initial search yielded 5028 articles and 482 articles were included in the final review. The age classification of young adulthood varied widely and no clear patterns of age range were noted. Of studies targeting only young adults, 100 different age classifications were reported and nearly a quarter of studies used a young adulthood age classification that was unique to the study. Over half of the included articles on young adults reported a minimum age of 18 years. More variability existed in the maximum age reported for young adulthood, with ages that ranged from 18 to 80 years. About half of the studies included young adults as part of a broader population. Conclusion: A better delineation and classification of young adulthood in chronic illness is needed. Much of current research reports on the term young adulthood with little consistency in age classification, which can lead to false equivalency between studies.