The Adolescent Coping Process Interview: Measuring temporal and affective components of adolescent responses to peer stress

The way in which adolescents cope with stressors in their lives has been established as an important correlate of adjustment. While most theoretical models of coping entail unfolding transactions between coping strategies and emotional arousal, the majority of coping measures tap only trait-level coping styles, ignoring both temporal and affective components of the coping process. The current study fills this gap by establishing the psychometric properties of a newly developed measure, the Adolescent Coping Process Interview (ACPI), that is more in line with transactional and developmental models of coping. Results indicate that the ACPI displays good psychometric properties, captures significant intra-individual variability in coping over the process, and points to emotional arousal as informing several coping-adjustment relationships. Moreover, the ACPI and similar approaches may help promote the development of more adaptive patterns of coping in adolescents by helping to identify specific points within the coping process at which to intervene

Friendship intimacy, close friend drug use, and self-medication in adolescence

The current study examined between- and within-person processes related to friendship intimacy, close-friend substance use, negative affect, and self-medication. We tested between-person hypotheses that global negative affect, friendship intimacy, and close-friend drug use predict increased substance use, and the within-person hypothesis that friendship intimacy and close-friend substance use moderate the temporal relationship between daily negative affect and subsequent substance use (i.e., self-medication). Experience sampling methodology (ESM) was employed to capture daily variations in mood and substance use, and multilevel modeling techniques were used to parse between- versus within-person differences in risk for use. Findings supported between-person hypotheses that higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of friendship intimacy predicted greater substance use, and a consistent trend indicated that friendship intimacy and close-friend drug use interact to predict substance use more generally (though not for self-medication). Risk and protective mechanisms emerged from this interaction such that the effect of friendship intimacy on adolescent use depends on the degree of close-friend drug use. More specific reformulations of the risk processes involving friendships and self-medication among younger youth are indicated

The Adolescent Coping Process Interview: Measuring temporal and affective components of adolescent responses to peer stress

The way in which adolescents cope with stressors in their lives has been established as an important correlate of adjustment. While most theoretical models of coping entail unfolding transactions between coping strategies and emotional arousal, the majority of coping measures tap only trait-level coping styles, ignoring both temporal and affective components of the coping process. The current study fills this gap by establishing the psychometric properties of a newly developed measure, the Adolescent Coping Process Interview (ACPI), that is more in line with transactional and developmental models of coping. Results indicate that the ACPI displays good psychometric properties, captures significant intra-individual variability in coping over the process, and points to emotional arousal as informing several coping-adjustment relationships. Moreover, the ACPI and similar approaches may help promote the development of more adaptive patterns of coping in adolescents by helping to identify specific points within the coping process at which to intervene