The influence of individual, peer, and family factors on the educational aspirations of adolescents in rural China

Friend Emotional Support and Dynamics of Adolescent Socioemotional Problems

Emotional support from friends is a crucial source of social support for adolescents, significantly influencing their psychological development. However, previous research has primarily focused on how this support correlates with general levels of socioemotional problems among adolescents, neglecting the significance of daily fluctuations in these problems. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between friend emotional support and both the average and dynamic indicators of daily emotional and peer problems in adolescents. These dynamic indicators include within-domain dynamics-such as inertia, which reflects the temporal dependence of experiences, and volatility, which indicates within-person variance-and cross-domain dynamics, such as transactional effects, which measure the strength of concurrent or lagged associations between daily emotional and peer problems. Participants were 315 seventh-grade Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years; 48.3% girls). Adolescents reported on their friends' emotional support at baseline and then completed measures of daily emotion and peer problems over a 10-day period. Using dynamic structural equation models, the results revealed that higher levels of friend emotional support were associated with fewer daily socioemotional problems. This was evident both in terms of average levels and dynamic aspects, characterized by lower mean levels of daily emotional and peer problems, reduced inertia and volatility of these problems, and a weaker spillover effect from daily emotional issues to peer problems. These findings highlight the significant role of friend-emotional support in mitigating adolescents' daily socioemotional challenges.

Parent-child educational aspiration congruence and adolescents' internalizing problems: The moderating effect of SES

Previous studies have found that adolescents and their parents may hold discrepant views about educational aspirations. However, little is known about how these discrepancies affect adolescents' internalizing problems and the moderating effect of SES on the relation between (in)congruence of parent-child educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems. Therefore, this study explored the relation between (in)congruence of parent-child educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems, and further tested the moderating role of SES. Based on two-wave survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of 8194 parent-child dyads in China (51.3 % boys, mean age = 13.58 years), multilevel polynomial regression and response surface analysis were performed to investigate the hypotheses. The results found that (1) internalizing problems were minimal when the two educational aspiration variables were congruent, (2) internalizing problems were the highest when the discrepancy between child educational and parental educational aspirations was largest, and (3) SES moderated the relation between (in)congruence in educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems. The study's results not only comprehensively and intuitively reveal the influence of parents' and children's educational aspirations on adolescents' internalizing problems, but also provide targeted guidance and suggestions regarding parenting practices for families from diverse SES backgrounds.

Reciprocal Links Between Friendship Quality and Peer Victimization Among Middle Adolescents

There is a robust association between friendship quality and victimization in adolescence; yet, it remains unclear whether friendship quality may be linked causally with different forms of victimization in middle adolescence. To fill this gap, this study examines the bidirectional associations of friendship quality and relational/verbal victimization with data collected at two time points, 6 months apart, in a sample of 671 middle Chinese adolescents (Mage = 15.63, SDage = 0.73, 49% males). Cross-lagged panel analyses revealed a two-way relationship between friendship quality and victimization, which existed in both verbal and relational victimization. Multi-group panel analyses observed that the cross-lagged associations between friendship quality and relational/verbal victimization were only found for males, but not for females. This result suggests that adolescent males' victimization is both affected by and a predictor of friendship quality, with implications for youth prevention programs.

Academic resilience, self-efficacy, and motivation: the role of parenting style

Previous research has found that parenting style influences academic resilience. Nonetheless, few studies have focused on the mechanism underlying the relationship between parenting style and academic resilience. This study aims to examine the relationship between adolescents' parenting style and academic resilience, drawing upon the framework of Social Cognitive Theory. Specifically, it wants to explore the mediating roles of self-efficacy and academic motivation in this relationship. The participants were 518 students chosen at random from educational institutions in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu. Social Cognitive Theory was the theoretical foundation for the study, and the Parental Authority Questionnaire was used to measure parenting style. Out of the respondents, 55.5% were male and 45.5% female. The student allocation in the study sample was as follows: 62.34% undergraduate, 28.22% master's, and 9.44% PhD. More than 60% of participants were over 25 years old. Moreover, the findings revealed that parenting style was directly and positively related to academic resilience. Parenting style was also found to be indirectly and positively related to academic resilience via self-efficacy and academic motivation, respectively, and sequentially. More crucially, it was discovered that the direct association was far lower than the indirect effects, with self-efficacy being the most effective. The study indicates a relationship between parenting style and academic resilience in adolescents, with self-efficacy and academic motivation acting as the main mediators. These findings emphasize the significance of these intermediary elements, implying that they play a larger role than the direct influence of parenting style alone.