Poster #14 - Longitudinal Relationships between Community Involvement and Adjustment during Late Adolescence

• In Event: 3-005 - Poster Session 3 during Lunch

Abstract

Past research has revealed that the importance of community engagement such as joining community groups, volunteering to help others, or leading efforts to gain civil rights as a route to promoting psychological health (Flanagan & Levine, 2011). For example, members of vulnerable groups (low-income residents, older people, unemployed people, and minorities) described ways in which problems such as depression, loneliness, and anxiety were reduced through involving in the community (Attree et al., 2011). However, only a few studies investigated the relationship between community involvement and psychological adjustment during the transition from adolescence to adulthood longitudinally. Adolescents at this stage are starting a new life and adjusting to new responsibilities and demands, often at a distance from friends and family. Thus, the transitioning might be accompanied by loneliness, depression and rebuilding self-esteem. The present study examined the relationship between community involvement and adjustments with regard to loneliness, self-esteem, and depression longitudinally during adolescence and emerging adulthood (at ages 17, 19, and 23). We expected to find a greater development in the community engagement will predict a decreasing trend of loneliness and depression, and an increasing trend of self-esteem from age 17 to age 23.

The current study is based on a longitudinal sample on three occasions across a six-year span: ages of 17 (n = 413), 19 (n = 333), and 23 (n = 274). The Inventory of Involvement Scale (Pratt et al., 2003) consisted of 30 items that assessed a range of community involvement. Psychological adjustments were assessed with regard to loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale; Russel et al., 1980), self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965), and depression (Radloff, 1977).

Multilevel Models using restricted maximum likelihood were conducted to investigate the trends between development of community involvement and levels of loneliness, depression, and self-esteem. We found that an increase in community involvement between ages 17 and 23 was significantly associated with a decrease in loneliness between these ages (β = -.1141, p = .02), and with an increase in self-esteem across the ages (β = .063, p = .0021). However, the development of community involvement between ages 17 and 19 did not significantly predict a trend in depression (β = .0009, p = .976) or between ages 17 and 23 (β = .0418, p = .261).

The results suggested a developmental understanding of prompting psychological adjustment that has the potential to inform efforts by engaging in the communities.

Authors

• Andrew Tamalunas, Seton Hall University
  Presenting Author

• Fanli Jia, Seton Hall University

• Kendall Soucie, University of Windsor

• Heather Lawford, Bishop's University

• Michael Pratt, Wilfrid Laurier University