Citation

Griffin AM, Sulkowski ML, Bámaca-Colbert MY, Cleveland HH. J. Sch. Psychol. 2019; 77: 110-123.

Affiliation

Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, 119 Health and Human Development University Park, PA, 16802, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Society for the Study of School Psychology, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsp.2019.09.004

PMID

31837720

Abstract

Youth spend a significant amount of time in school surrounded by and interacting with teachers and peers. For doubled-up homeless youth (i.e., youth who share housing with a series of friends and/or extended family members), in-school relationships may be important for their emotional functioning. The current study captured dynamic processes by which in-school teacher and peer social support (i.e., baseline assessments of prior support and daily early-day reports of school day support) influence homeless youth's daily emotional well-being, as assessed by positive and negative affect later in the day. Specifically, a baseline survey was used in combination with a 10-day twice-a-day diary design to examine the competing influences of prior (i.e., between-person) and daily (i.e., within-person) social support from teachers and peers during the school day. Baseline teacher support and early-day peer support were associated with higher later-day positive affect. In contrast, baseline peer support was associated with lower later-day negative affect. Baseline peer support moderated the association between early-day peer support and later-day positive affect, in that there was a significant effect of early-day peer support and later-day positive affect for youth who reported medium and high levels of baseline peer support. However, the later-day positive affect of youth who reported low baseline levels of social support did not appear to benefit from early-day peer support.

RESULTS suggest that the source of support (i.e., teacher and peer) differently influences daily affect and that receiving daily in-school support can promote daily positive affect while mitigating negative affect for doubled-up homeless youth. Overall, study findings suggest that providing peer and teacher social support is a promising prevention and intervention approach for fostering resilience among doubled-up homeless youth.

Copyright © 2019 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Daily diary; Homeless youth; Negative affect; Peer support; Positive affect; Teacher support