Personality, Perceptive Social Support And Posttraumatic Growth Among Adolescents Of Wenchuan Earthquake Areas: A Longitudinal Study

5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake has caused tremendous harm to body and mind of many victims. Many displaced people were homeless and bereaved. But disasters bring not only harms but also positive changes to human beings.This study evaluates posttraumatic growth (PTG), personality and perceptive social support of adolescents in Wenchuan Earthquake areas. It aims to increase our understanding of the relationship among them. 748 students from 6 middle schools in Wenchuan and Maoxian participated in this research in May 2009, October 2009, and May 2010. Longitudinal data were analyzed by Hierarchical Linear Modeling to study the level and development trends of PTG, as well as how does personality, perceived social support impact on PTG. The results are as follows.(1) The PTG level of disaster area middle school students was higher than the average level. Students of different gender and grade showed significant difference in PTG level. Girls reported more PTG than boys. Second grade junior middle school students reported less PTG than students on other grades.(2) The level of PTG was decreased and then increased with the course of time. The PTG development trends of different individuals were significantly different.(3) Scores of all five subscales of personality were positively related to PTG.(4) Personality is an important predictor of PTG level and development trend. A higher score of Personality predicted more PTG of adolescents. Openness has the significant predictional effect on the PTG development speed. The one who get higher score on openness decreased slower but increased faster on the PTG level than the one who get everage score on openness.(5) Scores of all five subscales of perceptive social support were positively related to PTG.(6) Perceptive social support has obvious influence to PTG. Value affirmation has dynamic predictional effect on the PTG development trend which changed according to different level of perceptive social support on three time points.(7) The relationship between personality and PTG was mediated by perceptive social support. Value affirmation played a partly mediating role on the extraversion-PTG relationship and a full mediating role on both the conscientiousness-PTG relationship and the openness-PTG relationship.