Aggressive behavior and aggression-resilience at school. Symposium presentation at the annual congress of the Swiss Society for Research in Education

Abstract

Introduction: In Europe and the United States, an average of 18-25% of adolescents experience physical violence at the hands of their parents. Extensive evidence has already established that parental violence against adolescents can cause an ample list of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Adolescents who do not develop psychopathological symptoms despite experiencing severe physical violence at the hands of their parents have been labeled resilient in research. But what does it mean to be resilient to violence? Whether someone can be described as resilient or not cannot be said in general terms but depends on the particular risk factors to which an individual is exposed to. Adolescents with average functioning in the presence of risk factors that often lead to psychopathology can already be considered resilient. On the other hand, for risk factors that have a weaker link to mental health, it might be more appropriate to call youth resilient if they are functioning above average. In current resilience research, resilience despite experiencing parental violence is usually operationalized dichotomously. This leads to youth being labeled resilient or non-resilient, with little space in between. Especially in the context of resilience as a processual concept, nuances of differences are lost in the two broad categories. This study therefore examined the following question: How many and what type of non-dichotomous patterns of violence resilience status associated with externalizing and internalizing symptom indicators can we identify using LPA, and how are they composed? Results: Regarding psychopathological symptoms, the lack of measurement invariance indicated that adolescents with and without physical parental violence experiences should be analyzed separately. Furthermore, four profiles were found. Two profiles were characterized by considerably high externalizing symptoms and medium internalizing symptoms and vice versa. The third profile showed adolescents exhibiting both elevated internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The majority of youth formed the fourth profile with little or no symptoms. Multinomial logistic regression revealed significant associations between the profiles and the gender of the adolescents in the group of adolescents with parental experiences of violence, but none in relation to socioeconomic status and migration background.