Trajectories of Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: Parenting Behaviors as Predictors of Change

• Main Author: Caron, Annalise Lawler
• Other Authors: Bahr Weiss, PhD
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: VANDERBILT 2005
• Subjects: Psychology
• Online Access: http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07252005-185542/

The overall goal of the present study was to identify parenting behaviors related to the intra-individual development and maintenance of adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, using statistical analyses for the analysis of intra-individual change (SAS PROC MIXED). Participants were 160 adolescents (84% male, 60% racial/ethnic minority, mean age = 14.6 years) and their primary caregivers. Trajectories of adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems were examined over an eighteen month time period, and parenting behavior predictors (i.e., warmth, behavior control, psychological control) of individual differences in these trajectories of psychopathology were examined. Parenting behaviors were found to predict initial levels, but not slope in both internalizing (i.e., behavior control) and externalizing problems (warmth, behavior control, and psychological control). Further, secondary analyses assessed (a) parenting behavior moderators of these relations, (b) curvilinear effects of parental behavior control on these relations, (c) specificity of these relations to less severe externalizing versus more severe violent behavior, and finally (d) competing reciprocal models of parenting processes with growth in adolescent psychopathology domains as predictors of parenting behavior trajectories. Parenting behavior moderator analyses indicated a significant interaction between initial levels of warmth and psychological control in the prediction of the slope of externalizing problems, as well as a within-individual interaction between behavior control and warmth in the prediction of internalizing problems. Curvilinear effects of behavior control were significant in the prediction of the slope of internalizing, but not externalizing problems. Specificity effects in the relation between parenting behaviors and severity of externalizing problems were not found. Internalizing and externalizing psychopathology domains predicted level, but not slope of parenting behaviors in reciprocal models. Overall, results from this study augment the knowledge base about how parenting behaviors influence and are influenced by adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems.