Pathways of resilience : predicting school engagement trajectories for South African adolescents living in a stressed environment

School engagement is associated with the resilience of adolescents living in stressed environments in sub-Saharan Africa. Even so, there is scant understanding of the antecedents of African students’ school engagement. In response, this article reports the results of an exploratory study conducted in 2018 and 2020 with a sample of 172 adolescents (average age: 16.02 years; SD = 1.67) from a risk-exposed municipality in South Africa. Clustered school engagement trajectories were identified using a longitudinal variant of k-means based on affective, behavioural, and cognitive school engagement. Evolutionary classification trees were used to identify meaningful predictors of the identified trajectories. The results point to specific combinations of factors – i.e., student age, parental/caregiver warmth, school resource levels, teacher competence – that sustained low and high school engagement trajectories. These combinations direct the attention of school psychologists and other service providers to the multiple systems that matter in varying ways for the school engagement of African students. They also call for continued investigation of the resource combinations that are salient to student engagement across stressed environments in sub-Saharan Africa.The RYSE study is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and JH position was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/cedpsycham2023Educational Psycholog

A multisystemic perspective on the temporal interplay between adolescent depression and resilience-supporting individual and social resources

BACKGROUND : Adolescent depression can severely interfere with age-appropriate and lifetime development and functionality. Physical functioning in daily life (as a means of individual support) as well as social support from family and friends have been shown to enhance adolescent resilience against depression. By applying a multisystemic model of resilience, this study investigates how these resources reciprocally influence each other and how they interact with depression over time. METHODS : Longitudinal data (three assessments over three years) from the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments project was analyzed using panel network analysis to investigate short- and long-term uni- and bidirectional effects. The sample consisted of N = 500 adolescents from Canada (mean age = 18.49, SD = 3.01, 56.40% young women) at the first assessment. RESULTS : Depression seemed to fluctuate, while the resources showed significant stability over the course of the study. Perceived family and friend support were not significantly influenced by depression while they had significantly negative temporal effects on depression. Only physical functioning showed a negative feedback loop, notably with somatic symptoms of depression. Family and friend support shared a reinforcing feedback loop, while physical functioning was not related to either type of support. LIMITATIONS : Future studies should address the low average of depressive symptomatology and subjective, global measures of social support. CONCLUSIONS : The resources show potential time-dependent effects: symptom-specific resources need to be applied in the short-term, while a pool of multisystemic resilience resources seems necessary over the long-term to increase the resilience to depression among adolescents.The Canadian Institutes of Health Research.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/jadhj2023Educational Psycholog

Student resilience to COVID-19-related school disruptions : the value of historic school engagement

Does historic school engagement buffer the threats of disrupted schooling – such as those associated with the widespread COVID-19-related school closures – to school engagement equally for female and male high school students? This article responds to that pressing question. To do so, it reports a study that was conducted in 2018 and 2020 with the same sample of South African students (n = 172; 66.30% female; average age in 2020: 18.13). A moderated moderation model of the 2018 and 2020 data showed that historic levels of school engagement buffered the negative effects of disrupted schooling on subsequent school engagement (R² = .43, β = −5.09, p < .05). This protective effect was significant for girl students at moderate and high levels of historic school engagement, but not at lower levels of historic school engagement. Disrupted schooling did not significantly affect school engagement for male students at any level of historic school engagement. In addition, student perceptions of teacher kindness were associated with higher school engagement and having experienced an adverse event at school with lower school engagement. The results point to the importance of facilitating school engagement and enabling school environments – also when schooling is disrupted.https://journals.sagepub.com/home/SPIhj2024Educational PsychologySDG-04:Quality Educatio

Multisystemic supports and adolescent resilience to depression over time : a South African mixed methods study

In sub-Saharan countries, like South Africa, there is scant understanding of adolescent resilience to depression over time; the multisystemic resource combinations that support such resilience; and whether more diverse resource combinations yield better mental health dividends. In response, we conducted a longitudinal concurrent nested mixed methods study with 223 South African adolescents (mean age: 17.16 years, SD = 1.73; 64.60% girls; 81.60% Black). Using longitudinal mixture modeling, the quantitative study identified trajectories of depression and associations between trajectory membership and resource diversity. Using a draw-and-write methodology and reflexive thematic analyses, the qualitative study explored the resource diversity associated with each trajectory. Taken together, these studies identified four depression trajectories (Stable Low; Declining; Worsening; Chronic High) with varying resource diversity at baseline and over time. Resource diversity was inclusive of personal, relational, contextual, and culturally valued resources in both the Stable Low and Declining trajectories, with emphasis on relational supports. Personal resources were emphasized in the Worsening and Chronic High trajectories, and culturally valued and contextual resources de-emphasized. In summary, resource constellations characterized by within and across system diversity and cultural responsiveness are more protective and will be key to advancing sub-Saharan adolescent mental health.The National Research Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. JH position was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathologyam2024Educational PsychologySDG-04:Quality Educatio

Multisystemic approaches to researching young people's resilience : discovering culturally and contextually sensitive accounts of thriving under adversity

As our understanding of the process of resilience has become more culturally and contextually grounded, researchers have had to seek innovative ways to account for the complex, reciprocal relationship between the many systems that influence young people’s capacity to thrive. This paper briefly traces the history of a more contextualized understanding of resilience and then reviews a social–ecological model to explain multisystemic resilience. A case study is then used to show how a multisystemic understanding of resilience can influence the design and implementation of resilience research. The Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments study is a longitudinal mixed methods investigation of adolescents and emerging adults in communities that depend on oil and gas industries in Canada and South Africa. These communities routinely experience stress at individual, family, and institutional levels from macroeconomic factors related to boom-and-bust economic cycles. Building on the project’s methods and findings, we discuss how to create better studies of resilience which are able to capture both emic and etic accounts of positive developmental processes in ways that avoid the tendency to homogenize children’s experience. Limitations to doing multisystemic resilience research are also highlighted, with special attention to the need for further innovation.The Canadian Institutes for Health Research.https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathologyam2024Educational PsychologySDG-04:Quality Educatio

Differential adaptation to adversity : a latent profile analysis of youth engagement with resilience-enabling cultural resources and mental health outcomes in a stressed Canadian and South African community

Please read abstract in the article.The RYSE study is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and JH position was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcchj2023Educational Psycholog

Resilience to depression: the role of benevolent childhood experiences in a South African sample

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.BACKGROUND : Studies elsewhere show that benevolent childhood experiences (BCEs) have protective mental health value. However, this protective value has never been investigated in an African context. Given the need to better understand what might support mental health resilience among African young people, this study explores the relationship between BCEs and depressive symptoms among a South African sample of young adults living in a community dependent on the economically volatile oil and gas industry. METHODS : A sample of young adults in an oil and gas community in South Africa (N = 313, mean age 20.3 years, SD = 1.83, range from 18 to 26; majority Black African) completed self-report questionnaires to assess BCEs and depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory-II). The analysis controlled for sociodemographics and experience of family adversity. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine the association of BCEs with depressive symptoms using STATA 17. RESULTS : The majority (86.4% of the sample) reported all 10 BCEs. Of the 10 BCEs, having at least one good friend was the most reported (94%) compared to 75% of the sample reporting having a predictable home routine, such as regular meals and a regular bedtime. The unadjusted multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated that having at least one good friend, comforting beliefs, and being comfortable with self were associated with lower odds of moderate depression. The adjusted results showed no association between BCEs and the depression of young adults in this sample. CONCLUSION : In this South African sample, our results do not show protective associations between BCEs and depression. This could be as a result of the homogeneity in our sample. It is also possible that the BCEs explored could not counteract the effect of chronic risk factors in the lives of the young people in this study context. Further research is needed to understand this complexity.http://www.frontiersin.org/Psychologyam2024Educational PsychologySDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein

Jan Holtge's Quick Files

The Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity

Understanding the mechanisms through which family risk affects adolescent mental health : a model of multisystemic resilience in context

There is substantial evidence that exposure to family adversity significantly and negatively impacts positive adolescent development by placing adolescents at increased risk of experiencing developmental difficulties, including conduct problems. Although the mechanisms responsible for these effects are still largely unknown, a novel line of inquiry in the resilience field conceptualizes positive adaptation, following exposure to atypical adversity, as resulting from complex interactions of systems at multiple ecological levels. The purpose of the present analysis was to apply this multisystemic resilience framework to the study of positive adaptation following exposure to family adversity in a sample of Canadian adolescents (n = 230; mean age 16.16, SD = 1.38) and South African adolescents (n = 421; mean age = 15.97, SD = 1.19) living in economically volatile communities dependent on the oil and gas industry. Cross-sectional survey data were used to investigate the mechanisms through which family adversity exercises its impact on adolescent conduct problems by accounting for their caregiving, peer, and community resources. Results of two moderated mediation analyses showed that family adversity impacts adolescent externalizing mental health negatively, via disrupted caregiving, when other resources are also considered. For the Canadian adolescents, these negative impacts were protectively moderated by peer support, but not moderated by appreciation for community traditions. In contrast, peer support showed no significant protective effect for the South African sample, while a strong appreciation for community traditions was positively and significantly associated with conduct difficulties. Contextual dynamics (e.g., social unrest) provide a plausible explanation for the discrepant results and bring attention to the importance of theorizing resilience in context.Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Killam Trusts and Swiss National Science Foundation.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/childrendm2022Educational Psycholog