Family Futures

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dvancing

ocial

ntegration

and

ntergenerational

olidarity

3.4

3.6

3.8

4.4

4.6

4.2

10-11

11-12

12-13

13-14

14-15

15-16

16-17

School connectedness

Community connectedness

Family connnectedness

Peer connectedness

Social connectedness trends during adolescence across family, school, peer and community domains

Source: Youth Connectedness Project

that adolescents’ social connectedness serves a protective func-

tion against the stressors experienced during development by

providing stability, a sense of belonging and meaning. A number

of cross-sectional studies have specifically found that greater

family and school connectedness are associated with lower levels

of maladjustment, higher levels of well-being and fewer nega-

tive mental health symptoms. Consequently, there is a growing

consensus that social connectedness acts as a protective factor for

adolescent health and development. Thus far, only a small number

of studies have investigated whether social connectedness is asso-

ciated with positive adjustment for youth over time. Therefore,

one of the aims of our research has been to close this obvious gap.

The Youth Connectedness Project

has studied the longitudi-

nal relationships between social connectedness (measured across

the four domains of family, peers, school and community) and

indices of well-being for New Zealand youth. This study sampled

approximately 2,000 community-based young people in three

age cohorts (10-11, 12-13 and 15-16 years at time one) over the

three time points between 2006 and 2008. The overall aim of the

Youth Connectedness Project is to examine the links between the

multiple domains of connectedness and positive outcomes for

young people in New Zealand, and to identify modifiable factors

that foster and enhance connectedness.

We first examined the average levels of connectedness across

the four domains throughout the developmental period assessed.

The data clearly indicate trends in connectedness throughout

adolescence. At the earliest ages measured, youth report high

levels of connectedness with peers, family and school, but low

levels of connectedness with community. Over time, connections

to peers tend to remain high and stable, connections to family

and school diminish and connections to community increase.

Trend lines indicate that the decline for family connectedness

and the increase for community connectedness both level off,

and that school connectedness begins to increase after the age

of 15 years. These results illustrate normative developmental

changes in the social relationships of young people, such that

during adolescence youth tend to engage in the process of indi-

viduation, seeking autonomy outside of the family system and

participating more in the broader social realm (for example work,

social groups, sport). The trends evident in our results reflect

well-established research findings which show that the process

of autonomy-seeking peaks during mid-adolescence as young

people begin to develop a more defined sense of self and then

begins to level off as these young people mature.

Following on from the examination of connectedness across

the developmental period, we next sought to investigate the rela-

tionships between the domains of connectedness and adolescent

well-being at each of the three time points. Correlation coeffi-

cients of cross-sectional data revealed positive correlations of

between 0.22 and 0.62 between domains of connectedness with

well-being. This pattern of findings indicates that the domains of

connectedness are significantly positively related to one another

and to well-being at each of the time points.

In order to assess the relationship between social connect-

edness and well-being over time, we next tested a hierarchical

residualized regression model

predicting well-being from Year 1

to Year 3. Step one included age, gender, ethnic group and well-

being at time one. Findings show that after controlling for levels

of well-being at time 1, individuals who were younger tended to

be happier two years later, and there is no difference between

girls and boys or between ethnic groups. The second step of the

regression showed that the domains of family, school and peer

connectedness were all predictive of increased well-being over

time, but community connectedness was not. Furthermore,

family and school connectedness manifested stronger relation-

ships with well-being than did peer connectedness. Notably,

upon the inclusion of the social connectedness domains in the

second step, the predictive effect of well-being at time 1 dimin-

ished, indicating that the construct of social connectedness

significantly overlapped with initial levels of well-being.