The moderating effect of social support sources on adolescent victimization and maladjustment

Abstract

It is well known that the experience of victimization often leads to adverse health and behavioral outcomes in adolescents. However, less is known about why victimization results in such outcomes for some youth and not others. One possible explanation is the presence or absence of social support networks in an individual's life influence the effects of strain. Because youth are often less equipped to deal with stress and other negative emotions caused by strain, having positive sources to draw support from could prove beneficial (Agnew, 2002; Miller, Fagan, & Wright, 2014). Drawing from general strain theory and its proposed conditioning hypothesis, the current study used two ordinary least square regressions to examine the moderating effect of social support on the relationship between victimization and two common forms of adolescent maladjustment: psychological distress and delinquency. Using data from NatSCEV III, analyses were conducted with a subsample of adolescents ages 10 to 17 (n = 1,957). Results showed that family social support significantly moderated the relationship between victimization and psychological distress, but not the victimization-delinquency relationship. To further test this moderating effect, a median-split was used. Results indicated that high family social support moderated the relationship between victimization and psychological distress. No moderating effect of friend social support was found.