Peer Exclusion Trajectories From Third Through Seventh Grade: Social Behavioral Predictors and Depressive Responses

• In Event: Peer Exclusion in Childhood and Adolescence: Multi-level Mechanisms and Risk for Depression

Abstract

Do children who are excluded by peers in elementary school continue to be excluded in middle school? Which behavioral, affective, and personality characteristics confer risk for peer exclusion? Are excluded children at risk for depression? To address these questions, we modeled exclusion trajectories in elementary and middle school from 3rd-7th grade, tested predictors of exclusion trajectories, and exclusion trajectory classes as predictors of depression.

Participants were 688 public-school students in the American South (M age 3rd grade=8.66 years). The sample was diverse (girls 51.5%; 64% European-American, 22% African-American, 12% Latinx, 2% Asian-American). Children nominated peers (N=688) for peer exclusion, anxious solitude, externalizing behavior, agreeableness, immaturity, inability to defend themselves, and sadness; and self-reported depressive symptoms on the Children’s Depression Inventory (N=230) twice-yearly from 3rd-7th grade.

Latent Class Growth Analyses (LCGA) were computed separately for elementary and middle school to allow change in trajectories after the middle school transition. This was important because growth curve analysis which revealed a drop in exclusion after the middle school transition. LCGA revealed three exclusion trajectory classes in elementary school: low-decreasing (62%), moderate-decreasing (28%), high-increasing (10%), and two in middle school: low-stable (84%), high-increasing (16%, Figure 1).

Peer-reported predictors of exclusion trajectory classes were tested with logistic regression (Table 1). In elementary school, membership in the high-increasing versus low-decreasing exclusion class was more likely if children were anxious solitary, immature, couldn’t defend themselves, sad, and female; but less likely if they were agreeable or externalizing.

In middle school, membership in the high-increasing versus low-stable exclusion class was more likely if youth were in the high-increasing exclusion trajectory class in elementary school, anxious solitary or externalizing in middle school, couldn’t defend themselves in elementary school and middle school, and female, but less likely if they were anxious solitary or externalizing in elementary school after accounting for these characteristics concurrently in middle school.

Exclusion trajectory classes were tested for differences in depression with MANOVAs. Children in the high-increasing exclusion classes reported more depressive symptoms than moderate-decreasing and low-decreasing classes in elementary school (.38 vs. .27, .26; F(2,222)=7.30, p<.001; post-hoc ps<.05) and the low-stable class in middle school (.34 vs. .23; F(1,197) = 7.80, p<.01).

Findings suggest that: 1) 10-16% of children demonstrate increasing exclusion trajectories in the last half of elementary school and the first two years of middle school, whereas most children (62-84%) demonstrate low exclusion across both periods; 2) exclusion in elementary school predicted exclusion in middle school, 3) across both periods high-increasing exclusion trajectories were predicted by children’s current anxious solitude, current and past difficulty defending themselves, and female gender, whereas externalizing reduced risk for this pattern in elementary school but increased risk in middle school; and 4) in elementary school high-increasing exclusion trajectories were more likely for children who were immature and sad but less likely when they were agreeable, and 5) high-increasing exclusion increased risk for depressive symptoms across both periods.

Authors

• Heidi Gazelle, Florida State Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Jessie K Lundin, Northern Arizona University