Socio-emotional violence resilience – a two wave latent transition analysis

Abstract

Adolescent's exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV), which is increasingly recognized as a distinct form of childhood maltreatment, is associated with a range of negative psychosocial outcomes, including increased risk for psychopathological behaviors and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Violence-resilient adolescents are those that act and grow in a social and emotional way that is adaptive despite IPV. The school class context as part of the social system gains importance especially in adolescence as a place of socio-emotional development and in the context of IPV as an alternative to the dysfunctional home. Therefore, this study considers a person-centered approach that focus on the social system in school context. Based on a sample in autumn 2020 of 933 (t1) and a sample in spring 2021 of 776 (t2) secondary school students in Northwestern Switzerland (7th and 8th grade) with IPV experiences, a latent transition analysis with two waves is conducted in the present study to uncover socio-emotional resilience classes and the respective latent transitions over two time points. We identified four different patterns of socio-emotional violence resilience for both measurement time points and compared them longitudinally with their respective trajectories. The non-resilient pattern appeared to be the most stable pattern. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, gender, migration background, peer rejection, prosocial behavior of school class and dissociation emerged as significant predictors of pattern membership.