Poster #25 - Promoting Youth Resilience: Elucidating the role of neighborhood features and parenting

• In Event: Poster Session 16

Abstract

Youth residing in impoverished neighborhoods are at risk for a host of maladaptive outcomes (Campbell et al., 2000; Wodtke et al., 2011). Even so, a large proportion of exposed youth (Vanderbilt-Adriance, 2008) evidence resilience, or successful adaptation in the face of adversity. While positive parenting is known to be a robust predictor of youth resilience to adversity (Gartland et al., 2019), studies have seldom examined how promotive factors in the broader context might play a role in facilitating youth resilience, or whether they do so by enabling the positive parenting that fosters resilience. The current study aims to fill these gaps in the literature by examining how positive neighborhood social processes and access to resources are associated with maternal nurturance, and in turn, youth resilient outcomes.

We will examine a longitudinal sample of families (354 youth in 177 families) exposed to chronic levels of environmental adversity (i.e., family poverty, neighborhood poverty, community violence) from the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development in Children and the Michigan Twin Neurogenetics Study (Burt & Klump, 2019). Participants were assessed at three time points, from middle childhood to late adolescence. Childhood exposure to promotive neighborhood social processes (i.e., informal social control and social cohesion) and resources will be assessed via the Neighborhood Matters Questionnaire (Henry et al., 2014) as completed by randomly-selected neighbors of the twin families at the first assessment. Maternal nurturance during early adolescence will be assessed via mother and youth reports on the Parental Environment Questionnaire (Elkins et al., 1997) as well as observational coding via the System for Coding Interactions and Family Functioning (SCIFF; Lindahl & Malik, 2001), both of which were collected at the second assessment. Finally, resilient outcomes in mid-adolescence will be assessed through a multi-informant approach that incorporates mother and father reports on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1978), as well as youth self-reports on the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM; Jefferies et al., 2019), Satisfaction with Life Scale, (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985), and Youth Self-Report (YSR; Achenbach, 1978), all completed at the third assessment. Given prior evidence that youth can demonstrate resilience in one domain but not another (Miller-Graff, 2020; Vazquez et al., 2021), we independently evaluated multiple areas of youth resilience (i.e., academic, social, and psychiatric resilience).

We will conduct path analyses to examine the effects of exposure to promotive neighborhood features (i.e., social processes and resources) during childhood on maternal nurturance and resilient outcomes during adolescence. To account for the non-independence of twins within families, we will use hierarchical clustering with robust standard errors. We hypothesize that earlier exposure to promotive neighborhood features will act to increase both maternal nurturance in early adolescence and youth resilience during mid-adolescence. We further hypothesize that the direct effect of promotive neighborhood characteristics on youth resilience will be partially mediated via maternal nurturance. Should findings support our hypotheses, it would highlight the importance of cultivating positive social processes and providing sufficient resources within communities to promote positive parenting and ultimately, youth resilience.

Authors

• Alexandra Y Vazquez, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Ann Shewark, Michigan State University

• Luke W. Hyde, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Kelly Klump, Michigan State University

• S. Alexandra Burt, Michigan State University