A Study on the Longitudinal Relation Between Early Adolescents' Mobile Phone Dependency and Self-Regulated Learning Using an Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling: Multigroup Analysis Across Gender

Abstract

Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the bidirectional relation between mobile phone dependency (MPD) and self-regulated learning (SRL) of early Korean adolescents in 4th, 6th and 8th grade, while taking into account gender differences. Methods The study made use of panel data from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Study (KCYPS), and three waves of data collected from 2,264 adolescents were analyzed by means of autoregressive cross-lagged modeling. Results The results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, MPD and SRL were consistently stable for adolescents in 4th, 6th to 8th grades. Secondly, a bidirectional relations between MPD and SRL were confirmed. In other words, there was a significant influence of a high level of MPD on a subsequent low level of SRL, and the high level of SRL also had a significant effect on the lower level of MPD across time. According to multi-group analysis, no gender differences were found in the relations between two constructs during the studied period. Conclusion Findings highlighted not only the necessary media usage education but also parenting intervention strategies may help early adolescents to be prevented from negative effects of media usage and to enhance self-regulated learning ability. Based on the results, more implications were also discussed. Keywords: early adolescents, mobile phone dependency, self-regulated learning, autoregressive cross-lagged effect, gender difference