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- Besic, Nejra, 1980-
(author)
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At first blush : the impact of shyness on early adolescents' social worlds
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Shyness as a behavioral characteristic has been in focus of research in psychology for a number of decades. Adolescent shyness has, however, been relatively overlooked compared with studies conducted on children and adults. This dissertation concentrated on adolescent shyness, aiming to attain a better comprehension about how shyness during this developmental phase might affect, and be affected by social relationships. The first aim of this dissertation was to study in which way shyness influences and is influenced by significant people in adolescents’ lives: peers, friends, and parents. Study III showed that shy youths socialized each other over time into becoming even more shy. Study VI demonstrated that youths’ shyness affected parenting behaviors, more so than parent’s behaviors affected youth shyness. The second aim of this dissertation was to investigate what shyness means for adolescents’ choices of relationships with friends, whereas the third aim focused on whether adolescents’ ways of dealing with peers would have consequences for their internal and external adjustment. As Study I showed, youths might take on off-putting, startling appearances in order to cope with their shyness. This strategy seemed, nonetheless, not particularly successful for the shy youths in terms of emotional adjustment. Study III showed that adolescents who were shy tended to choose others similar to themselves in shyness as friends. Study II showed that shyness might indeed have some positive implications for adolescent development, as it was found to serve a protective role in the link between advanced maturity and various types of problem behaviors. Overall, the findings point to some gender differences regarding all of the abovementioned processes. In sum then, the studies in this dissertation show that even though youths’ shy, socially fearful characteristics affect their emotional adjustment and those around them, shy youths are part of a larger social arena where they are active agents in shaping their own development. Although adolescent shyness might be linked with several negative outcomes, however, it might be other people’s reactions to socially fearful behaviors that help create and/or maintain these outcomes over time.
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| 2. |
- Besic, Nejra, 1980-, et al.
(author)
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Shyness as basis for friendship selection and socialization in a youth social network
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Shy children and adolescents have previously been found to have friends with similarly shy, withdrawn behavioral characteristics. How peers might socialize shyness over time has, however, not been thoroughly investigated before. Our network included 834 youths (339 girls, and 495 boys; M = 14.29), followed for three years. We used the social network analysis software, SIENA, to analyze the data. The results show that those youths who are shy are less popular and choose fewer friends in the network. They also tend to choose friends who are shy, and over time they will influence each other into becoming more shy – over and above other effects. Finally, girls’ shyness is more influenced than boys’ by their friends’ shyness levels. These results show the significance of looking at shy youths’ friendships over time, and embedded in social networks.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Kakihara, Fumiko, et al.
(author)
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The relationship of parental control to youth adjustment : Do youths' feelings about their parents play a role?
- 2010
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In: Journal of Youth and Adolescence. - New York, USA : Springer. - 0047-2891 .- 1573-6601. ; 39:12, s. 1442-1456
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recent research suggests that youths interpret parental control and that this may have implications for how control affects youths' adjustment. In this study, we propose that youths' feelings about being over-controlled by parents and feeling connected to parents are intermediary processes linking parental control and youths' adjustment. We used three years of longitudinal data sampled from 1,022 Swedish youths in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade (47.3% girls; 12-17 years old, M age = 14.28 years, SD = .98) who were mainly Swedish in ethnic origin. We tested models linking parental control (i.e., rules, restriction of freedom, and coldness-rejection) to adjustment (i.e., norm-breaking, depressive symptoms, and self-esteem) through youths feeling over-controlled by and connected to parents. The overall model incorporating youths' feelings showed that restrictions and coldness-rejection were both indirectly linked to increases in norm-breaking and depressive symptoms through increases in youths feeling over-controlled. Parental rules still independently predicted decreases in norm-breaking and in self-esteem, and coldness-rejection predicted increases in norm-breaking. In addition, some paths (e.g., feeling over-controlled to self-esteem) depended on the youths' age, whereas others depended on their gender. These results suggest that when youths' feelings are taken into account, all behavioral control is not the same, and the line between behavioral control and psychological control is blurred. We conclude that it is important to consider youths' feelings of being controlled and suggest that future research focus more on exploring this idea.
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| 5. |
- Kendrick, Kristin, et al.
(author)
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The protective role of supportive friends against bullying perpetration and victimization
- 2012
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In: Journal of Adolescence. - : Wiley. - 0140-1971 .- 1095-9254. ; 35:4, s. 1069-1080
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A crossed-lagged regression model was tested to investigate relationships between friendship support, bullying involvement, and its consequences during adolescence. Students, 12–16 years ( N = 880), were administered questionnaires twice, one year apart. Using structural equation modeling, a model was specified and higher levels of support from friends were related to lower levels of bullying and victimization one year later. Additionally, a bidirectional relationship between victimization and depression was found, and greater property crimes commission was related to higher levels of future bullying. These findings support the ‘friendship protection hypothesis’ and suggest the quality of support in friendships can protect against bullying victimization and perpetration. Prior research has shown that friendships can protect against victimization; however this is one of the few longitudinal studies to focus on the quality of friendship, rather than other characteristics of the friends. It is suggested that interventions should focus on increasing perceptions of support within existing friendships.
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| 6. |
- Kerr, Margaret, et al.
(author)
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A reinterpretation of parental monitoring in longitudinal perspective
- 2010
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In: Journal of research on adolescence. - Malden, uSA : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1050-8392 .- 1532-7795. ; 20:1, s. 39-64
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A commonly used measure of parental monitoring is parents’ knowledge of adolescents’ daily activities. This measure has been criticized on the grounds that parents get more knowledge about teenagers’ daily activities through willing youth disclosure than through their own active monitoring efforts, but this claim was based on cross-sectional data. In the present study, we re-examine this claim with longitudinal data over two years from 938 7th and 8th graders and their parents. Youth disclosure was a significant longitudinal predictor of parental knowledge in single-rater and cross-rater models. Neither measure of parents’ monitoring efforts—control or solicitation—was a significant predictor. In analyses involving delinquency, parental monitoring efforts did not predict changes in delinquency over time, but youth disclosure did. We conclude that because knowledge measures do not seem to represent parental monitoring efforts, the conclusions from studies using these measures should be reinterpreted.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Lillvist, Anne, 1978-
(author)
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The applicability of a functional approach to social competence in preschool children in need of special support
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of the thesis, with four empirical studies, was to test the applicability of a functional approach in investigating social competence of children in need of special support within the preschool context. The main theoretical framework was systems theory. Study I and II investigated preschool teachers’ definitions of children in need of special support and social competence respectively. Study III was a prevalence study investigating the number of children in need of special support based on traditional disability categories and functional difficulties. In study IV the social competence of children perceived to be in need of special support based on traditional categories and functional difficulties was compared using an observational method. The results in study I showed that teachers adopt either a child perspective or an organizational perspective in defining children in need of special support. The child perspective was related to a greater number of children in need of special support in the preschools, indicating that in preschools with several children in need of special support, teachers are more prone on seeing the needs of individual children, as opposed to the needs of the organisation. Study II found that teachers define social competence in young children in terms of intrapersonal skills, or as interpersonal relations. Study III found that the majority of children in need of special support are undiagnosed children with functional difficulties related to speech- and language and peer interaction. Study IV found similar profiles of social competence between diagnosed children and undiagnosed children perceived to be in need of special support. Overall, the results yielded support for adopting a functional approach in studying the social competence of children in need of special support.
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| 9. |
- Persson, Stefan, 1963-, et al.
(author)
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Adolescents' conceptions of family democracy : does their own behavior play a role?
- 2004
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In: European Journal of Developmental Psychology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1740-5629 .- 1740-5610. ; 1:4, s. 317-330
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Much research on family democracy has started from the assumption that parents produce the democratic climate and adolescent behavior is an outcome of it. In this study, we asked whether and how adolescent behavior contributes to family democracy, using both parents’ and adolescents’ behaviors as predictors of family democracy. Participants were 1,057 15-to-16-year-olds in a city in central Sweden. The results showed that adolescents’ conceptions of family democracy involve both their own and their parents’ behavior. When controlling for parents’ behaviors, adolescents’ behaviors added significantly to the prediction of democracy. Parents’ warmth and the adolescents’ openness to communication seem to be two major aspects of the democratic workings in the family. Hence, the democratic workings of the family cannot be described fully if adolescents’ behavior is ignored.
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| 10. |
- Persson, Stefan, 1963-, et al.
(author)
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Youth behaviors that undermine family democracy : do they change the family climate as a whole?
- 2009
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Family democracy is considered important for many reasons, but little is known about what determines or affects it. One cross-sectional study showed that youths’ perceptions of democracy in the family are determined by their own behaviors as well as their parents’ (Persson et al., 2004). However, only one youth per family was included in their analyses. This leaves open the possibility that youths’ behavior only had implications for their own relationships with parents. In the present study it is tested whether youths behaviors can change the democratic family as a whole. Using three waves of data from 146 same-sex sibling pairs aged ten to fifteen years at Time 1, we examined whether youths delinquency, defiance, and non-disclosure had consequences for the democratic family climate as a whole. Results showed that older siblings’ democracy-undermining behaviors (and changes in these) predicted subsequent changes in younger sibling’s perceptions of family democracy. The findings support a family systems interpretation of the democratic workings of the family as a whole in that the behavior of one youth in the family had consequences for a sibling’s perception of family democracy.
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