In developmental science, adjustment is an often used term that refers to reactions to identifiable stressors, with adjustment involving adapting the self to the situation, changing the situation, or both. Studies examining adjustment range widely, such as adjustment to school, parental conflict, chronic illnesses, adoption, victimization, or even to adolescence itself. Adjustment can also refer to the relative presence or absence of diagnosed psychological disorders, symptoms, or negative mood. The broad scope of what constitutes adjustment is reflected in the wide range of ways that it is measured, ranging from a focus on depressive systems to how one generally copes with a situation. The most specific way that adjustment is used arguably is in the contexts of adjustment disorders, but even those have been criticized as being too vague, poorly defined, and constituting indefinite symptomatology (see Strain and Diefenbacher 2008).
As a construct, adjustment has not been the subject of...
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Adjustment. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_487
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