Marion K. Underwood - US grants

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This longitudinal investigation will examine developmental precursors and outcomes of engaging in and being the victim of social and physical aggression. Whereas physical aggression inflicts or threatens bodily harm, social aggression hurts others by damaging their friendships, peer relations, or social status. Social aggression includes behaviors such as social exclusion, friendship manipulation, malicious gossip, and non-verbal efforts at alienation and manipulation. Preliminary studies have established that social aggression hurts children and is related to psychosocial maladjustment, but longitudinal research is needed to explore precursors, stability, and sequelae of perpetrating and being victimized by social and physical aggression. [unreadable] [unreadable] This study will follow a normal sample of 300 children from ages 9 - 14, a developmental period in which social aggression has been shown to become more frequent and intense. This investigation will examine how frequently children engage in and experience these behaviors and explore whether and when gender differences emerge, using multiple methods to measure social aggression (observations and telephone interviews, as well as peer nominations and teacher and parent reports). This study will explore factors that may contribute to individual differences in engaging in and being victimized by social and physical aggression: family, peer group, and school factors. This research will investigate developmental outcomes associated with engaging in and being the victim of social and physical aggression: qualities of peer and romantic relationships, self-concept, academic progress, identity formation, externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, personality difficulties, and eating disorder symptoms. This study will explore developmental precursors of adolescent psychopathology for both girls and boys, with the long-term goal of determining whether reducing social aggression might be helpful in preventing externalizing symptoms, internalizing problems, personality disorders, and eating disorders.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): When children engage in social aggression, they hurt peers by damaging their friendships and social status. Social aggression includes behaviors such as social exclusion (verbal and non-verbal), friendship manipulation, and malicious gossip. This Independent Scientist Award (K02) application seeks funding to support Marion K. Underwood, Ph.D., to investigate more fully the early developmental origins of social aggression and the psychosocial outcomes associated with engaging and being victimized by social aggression. Dr. Underwood is a child clinical psychologist with expertise in social aggression in the middle childhood and adolescent age ranges and experience in measuring social aggression using a variety of methods (creative observational techniques, sociometric nominations, and parent-, teacher-, and self-report questionnaires). She is the Principal Investigator of a longitudinal project currently in its third year, following a sample of 281 children from ages 9 -14 to investigate developmental origins and outcomes of social aggression. Short-term career development goals include augmenting quantitative skills to analyze these longitudinal data to maximum advantage, and increasing knowledge of preschool development and building a collaborative team to conduct a longitudinal study of social aggression beginning with 2-3-year-old children. The long-term goal of this research program is to understand better the role of social aggression in the development of psychopathology in girls and boys, to determine whether reducing social aggression might be helpful in preventing the development of externalizing disorders, internalizing problems, personality disorders, and eating disorders, and in promoting positive adjustment and achievement. Careful analyses of how social aggression unfolds, both developmentally and in real time, will guide the future development of prevention and intervention programs to reduce social aggression among girls and boys.

Engaging in and being victimized by social aggression during adolescence confers risk for the development of psychopathology and relates to emerging antisocial behavior. Understanding the development and consequences of social aggression may clarify the role of gender in emerging mental disorders, because girls engage in more social than physical aggression and social aggression might contribute to the development of disorders for which girls and women have higher base rates (depression, eating disorders, and borderline personality features, Crick et al., 1999, Crick & Zahn-Waxler, 2003). Social aggression harms peers by damaging friendships or social status, and includes behaviors such as social exclusion (verbal or nonverbal), malicious gossip, and friendship manipulation (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1989; Galen & Underwood, 1997; Underwood, 2003). This investigation examines the development of social and physical aggression through late adolescence, to explore the growth, change, and sequelae of engaging in and being the victim of social and physical aggression for an age range in which social aggression has rarely been studied (ages 14 [unreadable] 18). This competing continuation application proposes to follow the same sample that has been studied since age 9 in the previous project ([unreadable]Social Aggression: Precursors and Outcomes[unreadable], 2 R01 MH063076-06). For the most complete understanding of social aggression, this research will include measures of engaging in and being victimized by social aggression. An important innovation of this phase of the longitudinal study will be careful assessment of social aggression in online communication by providing adolescents with handheld devices and recording and coding the content and social processes of their Instant Messaging, text messaging, and email communication. This investigation will use multiple methods to measure social aggression in different contexts (coding of online communication and text messaging, self-reports via telephone interviews, friend reports, parent reports, and teacher and activity leader reports) to examine growth and change in mean levels of social and physical aggression for the total sample, as well as to examine whether individuals follow different types of trajectories for engaging and being the victim of social aggression. This research will examine how growth and change in social aggression relates to the emergence of psychopathology and antisocial behavior. Fully understanding developmental psychopathology for both genders demands serious investigation of engaging in and experiencing social aggression. This study will explore developmental precursors of adolescent psychopathology, with the long-term goal of determining whether reducing social aggression might be helpful in preventing externalizing symptoms, internalizing problems, personality disorders, and eating disorders.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Engaging in and being victimized by social aggression during adolescence confers risk for emerging psychopathology and antisocial behavior. Understanding the development and consequences of social aggression may clarify the role of gender in emerging mental disorders, because girls engage in more social than physical aggression and social aggression might contribute to disorders for which girls and women have higher base rates (depression, eating disorders, and borderline personality features, Crick et al., 1999, Crick & Zahn-Waxler, 2003). Social aggression harms peers by damaging friendships or social status, and includes behaviors such as social exclusion (verbal or non-verbal), malicious gossip, and friendship manipulation (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1989; Galen & Underwood, 1997; Underwood, 2003). This investigation examines the development of social and physical aggression through late adolescence, to explore the growth, change, and sequelae of engaging in and being the victim of social and physical aggression for an age range in which social aggression has rarely been studied (14 - 18). This competing continuation application proposes to follow the same sample that has been studied since age 9 in the previous project (Social Aggression: Precursors and Outcomes, 2 R01 MH063076-06). For the most complete understanding of social aggression, this research will include measures of engaging in and being victimized by social aggression. This research will employ both variable-based and person-based analyses, to examine whether social aggression might be typical adolescent behavior at low levels, but contribute to psychopathology for those who perpetrate social aggression with high frequency and for chronic victims. An important innovation of this phase of the longitudinal study will be careful assessment of social aggression in online communication by providing adolescents with handheld devices and recording and coding the content of their text messaging, Instant Messaging, and email communication. Analyzing how adolescents actually communicate online will illuminate how they use social aggression in this context, but will also provide a window into the secret world of adolescent peer culture (Greenfield & Yan, 2006, p. 392). With the multiple measures of adjustment included here, the proposed research can examine carefully how the frequency and content of adolescents' online communication relates to their well-being. This investigation will use multiple methods to measure social aggression (coding of online communication and text messaging, self-reports via telephone interviews, friend reports, parent reports, and teacher and activity leader reports) to examine growth and change in mean levels of social and physical aggression for the total sample, as well as to examine whether individuals follow different types of trajectories for engaging and being the victim of social aggression. This research will examine how growth and change in social aggression relate to the emergence of psychopathology and antisocial behavior in late adolescence.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This exploratory, developmental study will capture and code the content of adolescents' activity on the most popular social networking site on the Internet, Face book. According to large, national surveys, 73% of teens (12 - 17) use social networking sites (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010); 51% of teens check social networking sites daily, and 22% check more than 10 times per day (Common Sense Media, 2009). Face book communication will be captured and coded for a sample of adolescents participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of origins and outcomes of social and physical aggression (NICHD R01 HD060995, Social Aggression: Growth and Outcomes). This multi-method, multi-informant study began when participants were 9 years old and in the 3rd grade and has involved yearly assessments of participants' social aggression and victimization, relationships, and psychological adjustment. Three years ago, in the summer before the sample started high school (9th grade), participants were given BlackBerry devices with service plans paid for by the investigators, including unlimited text messaging, internet access for email, and a limited number of voice minutes. Since the fall of 2008, we have been capturing the content of all text messaging and email sent and received on these BlackBerry devices. At the time of the proposed study of Face book communication, the sample will be 17 or 18 years old and in the 12th grade (N = 200). In each year of the proposed two year study, adolescent participants and their parents will be asked to grant permission for the investigators to access the adolescents' Face book communication by installing a Face book application developed by a company called Arkovi. The Face book application will capture the content of participants' Face book communication: including the wall posts, status updates, inbox, and photo albums. All Face book communication will be captured, not only that on the BlackBerry devices. Face book content will be stored by Arkvoi and maintained in a searchable, flexible online archive maintained by a company called Global Relay for later coding and analysis. The first specific aim will be to examine social aggression and cyber bullying in the context of Face book and how Face book communication relates to offline social aggression and victimization. The second specific aim will be to investigate relations between Face book activity and other forms of electronic communication (i.e., text messaging, email) and to investigate whether different forms of electronic communication relate to positive and negative qualities of relationships with parents, peers, and romantic partners. The third specific aim will be to examine relations between quantity and quality of Face book communication and psychological adjustment. Adding the proposed investigation of Face book communication to this ongoing longitudinal study provides a unique opportunity to examine how Face book communication relates to adolescents' social aggression and victimization, developing social relationships, and psychological adjustment in a developmental period in which youth are transitioning to living away from home and in which symptoms of psychopathology may emerge.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Studying digital communication provides a window into the secret world of adolescent peer culture (Greenfield & Yan, 2006, p. 392). According to large, national surveys, 80% of online teens (12 - 17) use social networking sites (Madden et al., 2013). Youth ages 12 - 17 report sending an average of 60 text messages per day (Lenhart, 2012), and many claim that their social lives would end or be seriously impaired if they could not have access to text messaging (54% of girls and 40% of boys, CTIA, 2008). This proposed renewal of our ongoing longitudinal study, NICHD R01 HD060995, Social Aggression: Growth and Outcomes, will investigate how social aggression unfolds in digital communication and relates to psychosocial adjustment, how qualities of parent-child and child-friend relationships observed in middle childhood predict the development of social aggression online and offline through late adolescence, and how digital communication relates to adolescents' adjustment more broadly. This longitudinal study of a diverse sample examines social aggression and victimization across 10 years with multiple measures and informants, including observations of parent-child and child-friend interactions yearly from ages 10 - 13 and archives containing the content of participants' text messaging communication (for 4.5 years) and Facebook communication (for 2 years). This study offers the rare opportunity to examine relations among adolescents' offline relationships, socioemotional adjustment, and digital communication, from early through late adolescence. This application requests support for conducting state-of-the-art statistical analyses, performing additional coding of our digital communication data, investigating possible ethnic differences in social aggression and digital communication, and exploring the possibility of de-identifying the large archive so that it can be shared with other investigators. Because qualities of relationships and adjustment were assessed yearly by multiple informants, we will be able to investigate how social aggression (and victimization) and adjustment contribute to each other across the age range of middle childhood through late adolescence using autoregressive latent trajectory and growth-mixture models. Analyses using the dyadic growth curve and the one-with-many design will then examine how relationship dynamics with parents and friends in middle childhood relate to the long-term development of social aggression and victimization. To explore how other specific social processes (e.g., deviant peer talk, co-rumination, prosocial behavior, and provisions of support) in digital communication might relate to psychological adjustment, we propose to conduct additional coding of digital communication, using both Linguistic Interpretive Word Count (LIWC) software and our fine-grained microcoding systems. We will consult with an expert in data anonymization to explore possibilities for de- identifying the large archive of digital communication so that it could studid by other investigators.