Abstract
The current study examined the contributions of maternal and peer support to depressive symptoms in early to mid-adolescence and variation in these contributions across age, gender, and race. Five waves of data on maternal support, peer support, and depressive symptoms were collected on rural youth (N = 3,444) at 6 month intervals. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate within and between-person effects of maternal and peer support on depressive symptoms. Within-person effects of peer support did not vary by age, gender, or race. At the between-person level, peer support predicted levels of depressive symptoms at age 12, but this effect became nonsignificant after controlling for maternal support. Within-person effects of maternal support did not vary with age but were qualified by gender and race. Between-person effects of maternal support on depressive symptom levels at age 12 and slopes varied across race and gender, respectively. Findings highlight the robustness of the protective effects of maternal and peer support during adolescence among girls and white youth.
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Notes
To explore the possibility that peer and maternal support interact to predict depressive symptoms, a block of two-way interactions between the within-subjects effects of peer support and each of the within and between-subjects effects of maternal support and between the between-subjects effects of peer support and each of the within and between-subjects effects of maternal support was evaluated. In another block of three-way interactions, age was included in each of these four interaction terms. Neither of these blocks was significant at p < 0.05 (nor were any of the individual interaction terms in each block), indicating that peer and maternal support did not interact to predict initial levels of or growth in depressive symptoms.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a National Research Service Award (5T32HD007376) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Consortium on Human Development at the Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; National Institute of Drug Abuse Grant R01 DA13459 to Susan T. Ennett; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Grant R49 CCV423114 to Vangie A. Foshee. The authors would like to thank Jason Beckstead of the University of South Florida and Chris Wiesen of the Odum Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their thoughtful input on statistical analyses.
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Vaughan, C.A., Foshee, V.A. & Ennett, S.T. Protective Effects of Maternal and Peer Support on Depressive Symptoms during Adolescence. J Abnorm Child Psychol 38, 261–272 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9362-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-009-9362-9