Poster #213 - Exploring foster youths’ subjective appraisals of adverse life events

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Appraisals of adversity are subjective thoughts and feelings pertaining to the perceived significance or impact of adverse life event (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987). These subjective interpretations of events play an integral role in coping, as they are associated with different emotional and behavioral responses following adversity. For example, less negative appraisals of stressful life events have been found to be a protective factor against symptomology in youth exposed to maltreatment (Bal et al., 2009). Despite the importance of these subjective appraisals, little is known about how youth exposed to adversity more generally appraise the events in their life and if these appraisals differ based on age or the type of adversity. The present study explored differences in youth’s appraisals across categories of adverse events and between children and adolescents’ appraisals.

Participants were 486 youth living in foster care, who were part of a larger, federally funded research project. Participants included 52.1% males. Youth participants identified primarily as either Black or African American (45.8%) or White or Caucasian (30.6%). The mean age was 13.5 years with a range from 8-18. Analyses were completed separately for children (ages 8-12 years of age; M=10, SD=1.44, N =204) and adolescents (ages 13-18 years of age; M=15, SD=1.46, N = 282).

Participants completed the Life Events Questionnaire (LEC). The LEC is a self-report instrument that consists of 46 different life events, to which youth indicate their exposure to the events. To assess appraisals of these 46 events, four categories were created: family, peer, academic, and physical events. For each of these categories, appraisal valence was measured through items asking about the impact of the events on their lives, with lower scores indicating a more negative impact. To assess flexibility of appraisals, the difference between the mean valence score for each of the four categories of life events was calculated, with higher values indicating greater appraisal flexibility.

When comparing child and adolescent patterns of appraisals, for all categories of adverse events being appraised, children reported significantly more positive appraisals than did adolescents. Children, on average, reported that events had a slightly positive impact on their life and adolescents, on average, reported neither a positive nor negative impact of events. Adolescents reported a greater frequency in the experience of these adverse life events than did children across all categories of events, but for adolescents and children there was no significant difference in the valence of appraisals between categories of adverse events. Both children and adolescent showed little flexibility in their appraisal of adverse events, but children showed significantly less flexibility than adolescents.

The results show that youth may not have as negative an interpretation of adversity exposure as may be expected, and that children may even be able to view past adversity in a more positive light than adolescents. These results also show that youth’s subjective experience of events can be rigid and may be an important factor to consider when assessing the nature of trauma exposure.

Authors

• Stephanie Kaye Gusler, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author

• Yo Jackson, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author