Filtering by
- All Subjects: Adolescence
- All Subjects: Anxiety
- Creators: Doane, Leah
- Creators: Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics
- Resource Type: Text
Background: Unintentional injury has been the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States for the past 2 decades. Its health outcomes are often studied, but it may also relate to psychological concepts such as emotion dysregulation, which may also result in severe outcomes for individuals, families, and societies. There is no consensus on a conceptual definition of emotion dysregulation, and little prior literature on the specific relation between dysregulation and injury in the transition to adolescence. Methods: The current study aims to identify latent factors of emotion dysregulation using exploratory factor analyses. Subsequently, multilevel regressions illuminate relations between dysregulation and injury at 2 late childhood and early adolescence time points in a large ethnically, socioeconomically, and regionally representative sample of Arizona twins recruited from birth records and ongoing efforts. Results: 6 total factors representing emotion dysregulation at 2 ages were created. Factors were valid when tested against temperament and psychopathology constructs. No significant longitudinal or cross-sectional associations between emotion dysregulation factors and unintentional injury were found. Sex and rurality differences were found in factor scores and dysregulation outcomes. Discussion: The current study highlights new avenues of research and funding. Future research on this topic should reflect a concentrated and nuanced focus on injury. Concordant age 9 and age 11 factors loaded differently, which urges the field to strive toward developing a standardized definition for emotion dysregulation. Covariate differences highlight target populations for interventions in unintentional injury and emotion dysregulation, which remain independent areas of concern.
In the present study, I will focus on several aspects of parenting (monitoring, structure, positive parenting, harsh discipline) and the relations with social competence. The larger study, on which this paper is based, was intended to study multiple types of parenting behaviors and social competencies, and development of measures was culturally and developmentally informed (including focus groups and pilot collection). However, utilizing each dimension that emerged from analyses of the parenting behaviors and social competence measures would result in a study with too large a scope. I will include each aspect of parenting that emerged in analyses. However, I will focus on just one of the two factors of social competence that emerged in analyses for adolescents. This first factor includes prosocial behavior (helping and sharing; Eisenberg et al., 2006) and also is composed of general social competence items capturing adolescents’ use of manners and politeness. For the purposes of this paper, I will refer to this first factor as “social competence,” and I will draw on the general social competence literature and prosocial behavior literature.