Age differences in depressive symptoms, antisocial behavior, and negative perceptions of family, school, and peers among adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: To examine age differences among adolescents in the perceptions of family, school, and peers and their relationship with depressive and antisocial symptoms.

Method: The sample consisted of 11,516 adolescents, aged 12 to 18 years, coming from a large representative community sample from 212 randomly selected schools in the Netherlands. In the period between October 1992 and January 1993, subjects filled out a self-report questionnaire on perceptions of family, school, and peer group environment; depressive symptoms; and antisocial behavior. Multivariate analyses of variance were performed to analyze age differences in the perceptions of family, school, and peers. Relationships with depressive and antisocial symptoms were studied by means of multiple regression analyses.

Results: Significant age differences were found for all 3 social support systems, with negative perceptions of family increasing with age, negative perceptions of peers decreasing with age, and negative perceptions of school remaining fairly stable after an initial increase at age 13. Independent of age, negative perceptions of the family had the-strongest relationship with depressive symptoms and antisocial behavior. In addition, depressive symptoms had a stronger independent relationship with negative perceptions of peers than with negative perceptions of school, while antisocial behavior had a stronger relationship with negative perceptions of school. No remarkable interaction effects between the 3 social support systems were found.

Conclusions: Although age differences existed in the reporting of negative perceptions of family, school, and peers, the strong relationship with dysfunctioning in adolescence invariantly held true throughout the school years of adolescence.