3 Transactional processes between support and depressive symptoms 103 explored whether this was also the case for the reverse lagged effect. Overall, very few group differences in the within-family lagged effects were found. We did find one group difference, such that, contrary to our expectation (H5), increases in perceived parental support were followed by increases in depressive symptoms 1 year later in adolescents scoring low on neuroticism but not in adolescents scoring high on neuroticism. This group difference was only found with the annual dataset and, therefore, this result needs to be interpreted with caution and warrants replication. Several prior parenting studies also failed to indicate sex differences in within-family effects (L. H. C. Janssen, Elzinga, et al., 2021; Timmons & Margolin, 2015; Vrolijk et al., 2020), but did find other moderating variables that explained differences between families (Boele et al., 2020; L. H. C. Janssen, Elzinga et al., 2021; Timmons & Margolin, 2015). Future studies need to explore and explain potential heterogeneity in more detail, for example, by calculating family-specific effect sizes to explore the full range of heterogeneity in within-family processes (Keijsers et al., 2016; Valkenburg et al., 2021). Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research Although this study applied the same preregistered analytical approach to five datasets with varying measurement intervals, including several understudied intervals, the findings need to be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, there was some heterogeneity between samples in terms of sex composition, age, nationality, and the applied instruments. For example, the micro- and meso timescale datasets had a higher girl/boy ratio than the macro timescale datasets, and the adolescents of the annual dataset were on average younger than the adolescents of the other datasets. Moreover, this multi-sample study included two Dutch samples and one German and one Belgian sample. Hence, even though the analytical approach was uniform, and the studies demonstrate a need to assess within-family effects at different timescales, sample differences could have affected the within-family effects above and beyond differences in measurement interval. For instance, adolescent girls might be more vulnerable for interpersonal difficulties than adolescent boys (Rudolph, 2009), which might be an explanation why we found a negative average effect of depressive symptoms to parental support at the meso timescales and not at the macro timescales because the latter samples have a lower girl/boy ratio. Yet, the idea that the perception of poorer support of significant others, including parents, predicts poorer well-being is understood as a universal process that applies to all ages, even though cultural, religious, or family values may affect the way parents express their
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