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Everything’s Gonna be Alright! The Longitudinal Interplay among Social Support, Peer Victimization, and Depressive Symptoms

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Peer victimization has been identified as a risk factor for depressive symptoms. The current study investigated the longitudinal interplay among social support, peer victimization and depressive symptoms in early adolescence. We specifically investigated the promotive and protective role of parental and friendship support on the longitudinal relationship between victimization and depressive symptoms. A total of 960 Swiss adolescents (49% female, Mage 13.2 years) completed an electronic questionnaire four times, with 6-month intervals. Trivariate cross-lagged models with latent longitudinal moderations were computed. The analyses confirmed that peer victimization was positively associated with changes in depressive symptoms, and depressive symptoms were positively associated with changes in victimization. Furthermore, bidirectional longitudinal associations between both parental and friendship support and depressive symptoms were found, while neither parental nor friendship support was found to be longitudinally associated with peer victimization. Further, neither parental nor friendship support moderated the longitudinal relationship between victimization and depressive symptoms. Thus, the present results suggested that parental and friendship support were promotive factors for adolescents’ well-being, while neither parental, nor friendship support buffered the effect of victimization on depressive symptoms, thereby yielding no evidence for their longitudinal protective effect.

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Notes

  1. This strategy avoids artificially inflated model fit indices that arise from the use of more than three indicators per latent variable.

  2. In this regard, it is important to note that chi-square difference tests are very sensitive to sample size and make limited sense if used with a large sample such as the one of the present study (Cheung and Rensvold 2002; Little, 2013). Cheung and Rensvold (2002) concluded from their simulation study that deteriorations in CFI of up to 0.01 could be regarded as acceptable, and the more restrictive model should be preferred.

  3. To facilitate the understanding and the interpretation of the results, these phantom variables were referenced as if they were the original latent variables in the following.

  4. This procedure involves fixing the variances of the phantom variable at 1. While this works for exogenous variables (i.e., independent), fixing the residual variance of an endogenous variable (i.e., dependent) to 1 will cause estimation problems. This issue can be addressed by fixing the unstandardized residual variances at 1 and estimating the standardized residual variance in a first step. In a second step, these standardized residual variances can be used to replace the respective constraint on the unstandardized residual variances.

  5. Latent interaction variables were allowed to correlate with all other phantom variables in the model except those that were assessed at the same measurement occasion.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF 100014_130193/1: Perren and Alsaker) and an international research exchange fellow stipend from the University of Konstanz to the first author. The authors wish to acknowledge the netTEEN staff involved in the survey, as well as the teachers and students who participated in the study.

Author Contributions

T.B. and F.B. shared in the conceptualization of the paper. T.B. composed the introduction and discussion sections and revised the draft versions of the manuscript. F.S. wrote the methods and results section, conducted the statistical analyses, interpreted the findings, and revised draft versions of the manuscript. S.P. conceptualized, planned and coordinated the research project, and revised draft versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Taniesha Burke

  2. Institute of Education Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Fabio Sticca

  3. Department of Empirical Educational Research, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Sonja Perren

  4. Thurgau University of Teacher Education, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland

    Sonja Perren

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  2. Fabio Sticca
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  3. Sonja Perren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Taniesha Burke.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the Swiss legislature’s ethical standards for research with human participants, and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or ethical comparable standards. No ethical approval was required.

Informed Consent

Parents of participants were informed about the study. They were asked to inform the respective teachers in case they did not want their children to participate (passive-consent procedures). Participants were offered the opportunity to refrain from participation with no negative consequences (informed oral consent).

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Burke, T., Sticca, F. & Perren, S. Everything’s Gonna be Alright! The Longitudinal Interplay among Social Support, Peer Victimization, and Depressive Symptoms. J Youth Adolescence 46, 1999–2014 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0653-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0653-0

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