Stress and social evaluative concerns: stability across later middle childhood

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Jonathan C. Wright (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Heidi Gazelle

Abstract: The present study aims to determine if two different types of stress, life events and daily strain, have an impact on the development of children's social evaluative concerns among familiar peers during later middle childhood. Moreover, the cumulative effects of changes in levels of stress, and the impact that these changes had on the continuity or change in levels of social evaluative concerns, was studied. The explicit relation between anxious solitude (an affective-behavioral construct) and social evaluative concerns (thought to be elevated in anxious solitary children) was also analyzed. Additionally, it was hypothesized that social evaluative concern was a potential mediator of the relation between each type of stress and anxious solitude. Participants were 230 children assessed at six time points between fourth and sixth grades who were assessed using three self-reports (SASC-R, LEI-C, SH-C(A)). Anxious solitude was measured using a composite of peer report and self-report sociometric behavior nominations interviews. Results were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. It was confirmed that life events stress and daily strain both significantly predicted elevated initial levels of social evaluative concerns and these effects did not change over time, suggesting a stable relation between social evaluative concerns and both life events stress and daily strain across later middle childhood. Daily strain explained nearly twice as much variance as life events stress in predicting social evaluative concerns. It was also found that social evaluative concerns significantly predicted anxious solitude, but that social evaluative concerns were not supported as a mediator of the relation of life stressors and anxious solitude as neither type of stress significantly predicted changes in anxious solitude over time.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 2011
Keywords
Anxious Solitude, Daily Strain, Life Events Stress, Social Anxiety, Social Evaluative Concerns, Stress
Subjects
Stress in children $v Case studies
Anxiety in children $v Case studies

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