Commitment, Breadth, and Depth of Activity Involvement Predict Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Organized activities are major contexts of adolescent development. Approximately 75% of adolescents report participation in organized activities such as sports, student government, or band. These activities seem to promote positive adjustment and prevent negative adjustment. However, assessments of activity involvement are often narrow and incomplete, and associations between activity involvement and adjustment indices vary based on how activity involvement is measured.
Breadth, commitment, and depth are dimensions of activity involvement that are often studied individually. Breadth refers to how extensively youth are involved, or number of activities. Commitment pertains to satisfaction with activities as well as motivation to continue to participate. Depth refers to how intensively youth are involved, or time spent in activities. Few studies have examined the shared contributions of these dimensions of activity involvement to adjustment.
An additional gap in the literature concerns possible variability in the effects of activity involvement across levels of risk for psychological maladjustment. Recent research has found that activity involvement interacts with earlier levels of risk to protect youth against maladjustment. However, other research suggests that activity involvement confers stronger benefits for youth with initially low levels of risk.
In the present study, we aimed to elucidate the shared contributions of breadth, commitment, and depth to internalizing and externalizing problems during early adolescence, controlling for important selection factors (earlier level of adjustment variable, teacher-reported social competence, and parent-reported socioeconomic status). We also examined whether activity involvement more strongly predicts later internalizing and externalizing outcomes when earlier levels of adjustment indicate higher or lower risk.
Participants were drawn from The Child Development Project (N = 585). The present sample included 431 adolescents (206 males, 363 European Americans, and 62 African Americans) who provided extracurricular data when they were in seventh grade. Ninety-two percent and 87% of the sample responded to follow-up questionnaires in eighth and ninth grades, respectively. Adolescents self-reported breadth (i.e., number of activities), commitment (i.e., satisfaction and motivation), and depth (i.e., hours) of activity involvement (seventh grade) as well as internalizing problems (seventh and ninth grade); parents reported on externalizing problems (seventh and eighth grade).
A latent activity involvement variable, indicated by breadth, commitment, and depth, fit the data well. Structural equation models showed that the activity involvement latent variable predicted lower internalizing problems (β = -0.11), controlling for earlier internalizing problems, social competence, and socioeconomic status. An interaction between activity involvement and initial levels of externalizing problems revealed that higher activity involvement in seventh grade predicted lower externalizing problems in eighth grade only at lower levels of externalizing problems in seventh grade. In contrast, higher activity involvement in seventh grade predicted higher externalizing problems in eighth grade only at higher levels of externalizing problems in seventh grade (Figure 1).
Activity involvement may reduce risk for internalizing problems by counteracting core symptoms (e.g., perceived control, negative affect) or providing a context for peer and adult support. Evidence that activity involvement amplified lower or higher risk for externalizing problems suggests that friendship selection and socialization processes may occur within organized activities.

Authors

• Leanna McWood, North Dakota State University
  Presenting Author

• Stephen Erath, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gregory S Pettit, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author

• John E Bates, Indiana University - Bloomington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kenneth A Dodge, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer E. Lansford, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author