Abstract
Social mobility beliefs play a significant role in shaping adolescents’ adaptive developmental outcomes, including well-being and academic functioning. Nevertheless, existing research may not cast light on the distinct trajectories and potential protective factors of social mobility beliefs. The present study aims to identify heterogeneity in trajectory patterns of social mobility beliefs among Chinese adolescents (Mage = 12.45, SDage = 2.60; 55.1% boys; 40.0% rural adolescents) in a four-wave (i.e., fall 2017, fall 2018, spring 2019, and fall 2019) longitudinal design, and examines the protective roles of parental academic involvement and adolescent future orientation. Three distinct trajectories of social mobility beliefs were identified: high-increasing (35.1%; a positive trajectory with the best developmental outcomes, including the lowest problem behaviors and depression symptoms, and the highest life satisfaction and academic competence), moderate-stable (49.8%), and low-decreasing (15.1%; a negative trajectory with the worst developmental outcomes, including the highest problem behaviors and depression symptoms, and the lowest life satisfaction and academic competence). Apart from the main effects of parental academic involvement and future orientation, a significant interaction effect of these two protective factors and adolescent group was detected, and only rural adolescents who reported both high levels of parental academic involvement and future orientation have a greater chance of being placed in the high-increasing trajectory than the low-decreasing trajectory. These findings highlight the significance of clarifying individual differences in the dynamic process of social mobility beliefs during adolescence, and elucidate rural-urban disparities in the influences of protective factors on social mobility beliefs trajectories, and inform individualized intervention strategies.
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Notes
Life satisfaction was measured at Wave 2 as the earliest wave.
A quadratic (and a linear) model was examined, and could not fit the data for social mobility beliefs well.
Since both LCGA and growth mixture modeling (GMM) are widely used longitudinal mixture techniques, the current study did alternate model analyses by using GMM. However, these alternate model analyses failed to converge or did not yield appropriate solutions (more detailed information can be found on the supplemental materials).
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Acknowledgements
We are appreciative of the adolescents who participated in our study and the research assistants who assisted with data collection.
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This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071076), and the Project of Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education of China (2022JDZS001).
Data Sharing and DeclarationThe datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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S.X. participated in conceptualizing the study, conducting statistical analyses, and drafting the manuscript; S.Z. helped to interpret the data and edited the manuscript; J.X. participated in data collection, and helped to conduct statistical analyses; Y.W. helped to edit and revise the manuscript; Y.L. helped with the re-analysis of the data and helped to revise and edit the manuscript; Z.L. helped with the visualization of the results and helped to revise and edit the manuscript; D.L. participated in the design and coordination of the study, provided critical reviews of the manuscript, and contributed to funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Xiang, S., Zhao, S., Xiao, J. et al. Longitudinal Trajectories of Social Mobility Beliefs among Chinese Adolescents: The Protective Roles of Parental Academic Involvement and Adolescent Future Orientation. J. Youth Adolescence (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01984-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01984-x