Autonomy-relatedness Patterns and their Association with Academic and Psychological Adjustment among Chinese Adolescents

Abstract

Establishing autonomy and maintaining relatedness with parents are two of the most crucial goals for adolescents and meeting these goals can be critical for academic and psychological adjustment. A two-dimensional framework was proposed for exploring the integrative synthesis of autonomy and relatedness, but its cultural applicability was limited. To better account for the situations associated with non-Western cultural context, this study extended the prior framework to three dimensions (volition, functional independence, and relatedness) and utilized latent profile analysis to explore the configurations and their concurrent and longitudinal (one year later) associations with adjustment (academic engagement, academic buoyancy, depressive symptoms, and externalizing problems). The study collected data from 3992 Chinese adolescents (51.33% girls, M_age = 15.41, SD = 0.55). Latent profile analyses identified five profiles: High, High Functional Independence, Moderate, Low Functional Independence, and Extremely Low Functional Independence. The High profile was the robust optimal pattern for academic and psychological adjustment, while the Low Functional Independence and Extremely Low Functional Independence were risk patterns over time. The High Functional Independence profile was only conducive to academic areas but not to psychological areas. Findings demonstrated the necessity of the three-dimensional framework in this field.

Keywords: Adjustment; Chinese adolescents; Functional independence; Latent profile analysis; Relatedness; Volition.