Perceived Relational Support in Adolescence: Dimensions, Configurations, and Adolescent Adjustment

Abstract

The perceived relational support from four key providers (father, mother, special sibling, and best friend) on five provisions (quality of information, respect for autonomy, emotional support, convergence of goals, and acceptance) was examined for 2,262 adolescents (aged 12-18 years). In a variablecentered approach, factor analyses yielded five dimensions of support: three specific to providers (parent, friend, and sibling support) and two specific to provisions (convergence of goals and respect for autonomy). Only parental support was found to change (decrease) across age. In a person-centered approach, five types of adolescents with different configurations of perceived support were identified. The first three types differed in overall level of support (high, average, and low) for all of the five dimensions; the fourth type represented extremely low support from parents with above-average support from best friends; the fifth type consisted of adolescents with no best friend. These configurations were significantly related to different patterns of adolescent adjustment in various domains (psychological well-being, delinquency, substance use, and peer-group functioning).

Bullying and Victimization, Depressive Mood, and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in Adolescents: The Moderating Role of Parental Support

“…To assess parental support, participants completed a 12-item version of the Relational Support Inventory (RSI; Scholte et al 2001). The scale measures aspects of emotional and instrumental support by fathers and mothers separately.…”

Aggressive and nonaggressive rejected students: An analysis of their differences

“…Cronbach's reliability coefficients for these subscales were .87, .76, and .75, respectively. Scholte, van Lieshout, & van Aken, 2001). Perceived support from parents, best friend, and boy/girlfriend was assessed using this 27-item scale which measures the following four dimensions: emotional support (e.g., "In this person's view, I can't do anything right: He/she is always criticizing me;" reverse coded), informational support (e.g., "This person explains or shows how I can make or do something"), respect for autonomy (e.g., "This person lets me solve problems as much as possible on my own but also provides help when I ask for it"), and convergence of goals (e.g., "This person and I have many conflicts with regard to school achievement, the future, or career opportunities;" reverse coded).…”

“…The RSI measure of social support has been found to be positively associated with personal adjustment in adolescence (Branje, van Aken, & Lieshout, 2002;Scholte et al, 2001) and negatively with psychological distress in the Spanish adolescent population (Herrero et al, in press). The Father-Mother Aggression Scale has been used in previous investigations (e.g., Estévez & Musitu, 2004), in which higher levels of aggression between parents were found to be related to higher levels of aggressiveness in children.…”

A comparison of individual qualities of resiliency in adolescents with mild intellectual disability and typically developing adolescents

“…Results of other studies conducted on samples of TD adolescents indicated that self-efficacy (Jacobs et al, 2002;Pajares & Valiante, 1999) and optimism (Carvajal et al, 2002, Patton et al, 2011 decreased with age, and that seeking help as a coping strategy occurred earlier than more complex strategies requiring more developed cognitive abilities (Compas et al, 2001;Hampel & Petermann, 2005). With regard to sense of relatedness in TD adolescents, previous studies also indicated that younger adolescents had a higher level of attachment (Laible et al, 2000;Muris et al, 2003) and perceived social support (Malecki & Demaray, 2002;Scholte et al, 2001), as well as a lower level of loneliness (Brage et al, 1993;Chipuer & Pretty, 2007) compared to older adolescents. The obtained results which point to age differences in emotional reactivity in TD adolescents are consistent with findings of other authors according to which emotional reactivity decreased (Silket al, 2003), and emotion regulation increased (Silvers et al, 2012) with age.…”