Introduction to the Youth Connectedness Project

1
Introduction to the Youth Connectedness Project

• 4 October, 2007
• Connectedness in Youth Seminar
• Paul Jose--Senior Researcher

2
A brief history

• Official title of the FRST grant Connectedness
  in young New Zealanders Social connectedness,
  transitions, and well-being
• We began in mid-2004 and are scheduled to finish
  the grant in mid-2009.
• Our chief goal is to collect annual longitudinal
  data on a large sample of early adolescents over
  three years (06, 07, and 08).
• We succeeded in getting the first wave of data in
  06, and we are almost done with the data
  collection in 07.

3
Adolescent development

• Western societies (and related research) have
  emphasised the separation of the adolescent from
  the family
• individuation
• construction of the self
• autonomy
• Our team believes that an important dynamic in
  the adolescent period has been overlooked
• connectedness
• In the last decade more work has been devoted to
  understanding how these opposing tendencies
  co-occur and play out over the adolescent years.

4
Healthy development

• A healthy trajectory for adolescents seems to be
  a combination of independence and interdependence
• But we dont know as much as we should about the
  ties and connections that youth foster, retain,
  or weaken
• The chief aim of the present longitudinal study
  was to track degree and type of connectedness
  from 10 to 16 years
• School
• Family
• Peers
• Community
• So lets briefly discuss the dataset.

5
First year of data

• We collected data in four ways
• lap-top administered self-report surveys from
  about 2,175 adolescents (10-15 years)
• Self-report surveys from one of the parents of
  the adolescent
• Surveys from most of the principals of the
  schools from which we accessed participants and
• NZCER-focused interviews and digital storytelling.

6
Sampling goals

• Equal numbers of males and females 52 females
  and 48 males.
• Equal numbers of Maori and ENZ 50 ENZ 30
  Maori, and 20 Other. (Note Maori defined as
  anyone who ticked that option, can include
  bicultural individuals.)
• Equal numbers of three cohorts (Years 6, 8,
  10) slightly more of the younger kids.
• A wide range of school deciles average was 5.2,
  and we obtained schools at every point on the
  scale.

7
Ethnicity by Age breakdown
8
School decile range
9
Covering geographical regions
10
Did we get a good sample?

• On balance, we feel that we did.
• We sought to overrepresent Maori adolescents, and
  we did.
• We underrepresented rural youth (well, maybe),
  but did well on school decile, gender, and age.
• Can we hold on to this sample? We are doing
  reasonably well finding and retaining
  adolescents anticipate 5-7 loss.

11
Overall analytic plan

• Literally hundreds of possible analyses are
  possible due to the diversity of the sample and
  the wide range of assessed constructs.
• Main goal is to see whether connectedness is
  associated (predictive of) wellbeing.
• How have we done with this prediction?

12
Quick tour of the constructs

• Demographic variables
• Support
• Wellbeing
• Coping stress
• Family dynamics
• School achievement and relationships
• Bullying (actor and receiver)
• Peer relationships
• Technology
• Spirituality
• Ethnic identity
• Community connections
• Each is composed of many individual questions
  and subscales.
• Lets see how the four areas of connectedness
  played out over our age range.

13
Family connectedness decreased with age
14
So does connectedness with school
15
Peer connectedness didnt seem to change much
16
Connectedness with community increased
17
Gender differences

• Females report higher
• School connectedness
• Peer connectedness
• No gender differences for
• Community connectedness
• Family connectedness

18
What about wellbeing?

• Composed of
• Personal Identity
• Morality of Action
• Aspirations/Direction
• Positive Relations with Others
• Confidence
• Negative Affect (reverse-coded)
• Positive Affect
• Life Satisfaction
• Depression Orientation (reverse-coded)

19
Age trend is typical
Overall, no gender difference, but females tend
to show more decrement over early adolescence
than males.
20
Connectedness seems to be related to wellbeing
Note that this is cross-sectional data and we
cant determine the direction of causality. It is
possible that wellbeing predicts connectedness,
as well as the reverse (depicted here). Once we
have longitudinal data, we will be able to
examine the direction of causality. Also, we seek
to determine which of the potential moderators
(age, gender, SES, ethnicity, etc.) affect this
basic relationship and how.
R2 .39
21
Much remains to be done

• The basic hypothesis seems to have validity, but
  we need to probe this basic relationship.
• Many other variables other than connectedness and
  wellbeing need examination (bullying, technology,
  family dynamics, etc.).
• We are motivated to see how we can triangulate in
  on adolescents lives with the different sources
  of data (adolescent parent school).
• The programme today will relate the early
  findings based on these cross-sectional data. We
  are excited by the prospect of longitudinal data.
• Now lets hear from the KMRG group.