Social support compensation and internalizing symptoms during adolescence

The current study sought to add to the social support literature by examining the relationship between adolescent perceptions of social support from different support sources and internalizing symptoms. More specifically, the present study investigated stress-buffering and compensation effects of social support from mothers, fathers, classmates, and close friends related to internalizing symptoms at the middle school level. The primary question guiding this study was: Does social support from one source moderate support from another source when predicting internalizing symptoms? The results were examined specifically to determine if support from one source can compensate for a lack of support from another source. A secondary question was: How does this effect vary by gender or levels of stress? The specific goals of this study were to: (1) examine the relationship between social support from different sources and internalizing symptoms; (2) examine the potential for social support from one source to moderate support from another source when predicting internalizing symptoms; (3) examine the potential for social support from one source to moderate support from another source at different levels of stress when predicting internalizing symptoms.;The current study utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) as the primary statistical technique to examine these relationships. The current study has several important findings to add to the existing social support literature, including evidence for both the main effect and stress-buffering models of social support. There is also evidence of social support compensation for adolescents. Specifically, for girls, mothers and classmates emerged as the most consistent sources of support to have a main effect on internalizing problems. Moderation was only found in the model that included both mother and classmate support. When stress was taken into account, for girls, the only sources of support with the ability to compensate for other during times of high stress are mothers for fathers (parent-to-parent) and classmates for friends (peer-to-peer). This suggests that for girls, while compensation is possible, it typically only occurs when stress levels are elevated and only mothers and classmates can provide compensation.;For boys, mothers and fathers emerged as the most consistent sources of support to have a main effect on internalizing problems. There was evidence for stress buffering with mothers and classmates and fathers and classmates, but the effect was only positive (i.e., decreased levels of internalizing problems) if boys had high support from either mothers and fathers or classmates. There was a negative effect (i.e., increased levels of internalizing problems) when boys had high levels of both parent and classmate support. When stress was taken into account, it was revealed fathers compensated for classmates and friends when stress was high or low, whereas classmates compensated for father when stress was high and friends only compensated for fathers when stress was low.