Exploring the Composition of Adolescents’ Social Support Networks and Associated Long-term Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

As children become adolescents, they may rely on multiple sources beyond their immediate family for support, including peers, teachers, and other non-parental adults. While there is extensive research on each of these supports individually, there has been little investigation of how the specific combination of relationships in adolescents’ lives affect their development. The goals of the proposed analyses are to 1) explore what types and patterns of perceived support characterize adolescents’ social support networks and 2) examine how the composition of their support networks is associated with psychosocial outcomes in young adulthood. Previous research suggests that despite their expanding networks, parents still play a crucial role in adolescents’ well-being and that different people offer different types of support (Hombrados-Mendieta et al., 2012; Schacter & Margolin, 2019). Therefore, we hypothesize that parental support will be the main predictor of adult psychosocial outcomes but that non-parental supports will provide compensatory benefits in the absence or lack of parental support. Based on previous literature (Bokhorst et al., 2010), we also hypothesize that the type of non-parental support will matter, with friends offering greater benefits than teachers or other adults.

The proposed analyses will use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to follow a total of 15,701 respondents from grades 7 to 12 (Wave I) to when they were 24 to 34 years old (Wave IV). We already have access to the data, which makes the proposed analyses feasible by the conference date. We will start by conducting an exploratory cluster analysis with Wave I data to observe variances across all domains of perceived support (maternal, paternal, friend, teacher, and non-parental adult) and identify the most common profiles of social support networks. We will then conduct a one-way MANCOVA with these profiles to examine between-group differences in self-reported depressive symptoms, number of close friends, and romantic involvement and satisfaction levels at Wave IV. We are particularly interested in the social profiles of adolescents with low parental support and whether the source of non-parental support matters (e.g., do adolescents with low parental support but high peer support have better outcomes than those with high teacher support?). If the identified profiles do not differ in their levels of perceived parental support, we will manually create groups that reflect combinations of high and low support from parents and other domains (e.g., low parental and high peer support; high parental and high teacher support). We will conduct another one-way MANCOVA with these groups to examine between-group differences in the same outcomes listed above. We will control for the effects of race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status across all analyses.

The results of this study will reveal patterns of perceived support from multiple sources among adolescents and their relevance for well-being. In particular, we will clarify the extent to which profiles of both parental and non-parental support during adolescence predict young adult psychosocial outcomes. These findings will strengthen our understanding of which relationships promote healthy adolescent development and can inform social interventions.

Authors

• Deborah Han, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Jenalee Doom, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author