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Exploring Psychosocial Mechanisms and Interactions: Links Between Adolescent Emotional Distress, School Connectedness, and Educational Achievement

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Abstract

Internalizing mental health issues are a significant developmental and clinical concern during adolescence, but rarely identified as a problem among school staff. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined the associations between adolescent emotional distress, school connectedness, and educational achievement by exploring potential mechanistic and interactive roles of perceived school connectedness on the emotion–education association. Emotional distress was negatively associated with adolescents’ perceptions of belonging to school, which, in turn, may negatively influence educational achievement. School connectedness also had both additive and multiplicative interaction effects on the emotion–education relationship. Results support previous evidence of school connectedness as a protective factor for adolescents with internalizing mental health concerns, although much of the work to date has focused on externalizing problems. This study informs our understanding of how, why, and for whom emotional problems influence educational outcomes in light of social support in the school context.

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Notes

  1. Information regarding the Add Health Study (population, sample design, instrument, data collection) can be found at the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris, 2008) Web site at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design.

  2. SES is a combination of household income and mothers and fathers level of education.

  3. Bootstrapping involves resampling in order to make inferences about the population rather than assumptions about the distribution of the population (Lockwood & Mackinnon, 1998; Preacher & Hayes, 2004). Thus, the assumption of normality is not required.

  4. It should be noted that the signs between the variables are inconsistent, that is, there is a negative relationship between emotional distress and both school connectedness and educational achievement, while there is a positive relationship between school connectedness and educational achievement. This could appear to lead to inconclusive results; however, when calculating the effect of an inconsistent meditational model, the absolute values are used in the Sobel test.

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Acknowledgments

The current study was initiated as part of the first author’s dissertation research at the University of Missouri and completed under postdoctoral fellowship support by Grant Number 5T32MH019545-20, awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as part of a National Research Service Award Institutional Training Grant (NRSA, T32) at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original [Add Health Study] design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health Web site (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. WestEd, Health and Human Development Program, 4665 Lampson Ave., Los Alamitos, CA, 90720, USA

    Christina M. Pate

  2. College of Education, University of Missouri, 316 Hill Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Melissa A. Maras

  3. College of Education, University of Missouri, 5B Hill Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Stephen D. Whitney

  4. Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Bavaro Hall, 139A, 417 Emmet Street, Charlottesville, VA, 22903, USA

    Catherine P. Bradshaw

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Correspondence to Christina M. Pate.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest. The contents of this manuscript are consistent with the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct pertaining to Research and Publication (APA Standard 8). The researchers signed an agreement, in accordance with Add Health regulations to utilize the contractual data set purchased by university faculty. The University’s Internal Review Board (IRB) approved the use of this contractual data set provided that the handling and storing of sensitive data be kept confidential. Additional information regarding the Add Health Study (including informed consent) can be found at the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris, 2008) Web site at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design.

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Pate, C.M., Maras, M.A., Whitney, S.D. et al. Exploring Psychosocial Mechanisms and Interactions: Links Between Adolescent Emotional Distress, School Connectedness, and Educational Achievement. School Mental Health 9, 28–43 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-016-9202-3

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