Chapter 3 78 processes found opposing associations at the between- and within-family level, indicating the need to disentangle both levels. Specifically, the results showed a negative correlation between parental autonomy support and adolescents’ social anxiety symptoms at the between-family level, but a positive correlation at the within-family level (Nelemans et al., 2020). Thus, to test the transactional theories of child development (Granic, 2005; Sameroff, 2010) and adolescent depression (Rudolph, 2009), longitudinal within-family studies are vital, but unfortunately still scarce (Boele et al., 2020). Moreover, the few available within-family studies on this topic have focused on concurrent associations, which limits the opportunity to study how transactional processes unfold within families over time. For example, daily diary studies have shown that adolescents report increased negative feelings on days when they also report a decline in parental support (Bai et al., 2017; L. H. C. Janssen, Elzinga, et al., 2021). Similarly, studies with longer measurement intervals suggest that adolescents report increased depressive symptoms at times when they also report a decline in maternal support (Vaughan et al., 2010), but not in paternal support (Shanahan et al., 2008). Although it is valuable to examine how over-time fluctuations co-exist within families, to study the transactional processes it is also vital to assess ‘what comes first’. That is, do fluctuations in perceived parental support predict subsequent fluctuations in adolescent depressive symptoms within the same family, or vice versa? Therefore, this study estimated Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM). This type of modeling is suitable to assess both concurrent and cross-lagged effects at the within-family level, because it disentangles the stable between-family variance and the overtime within-family variance (Hamaker et al., 2015; Keijsers, 2016). Timing of These Transactional Processes Even though the transactional perspective is now increasingly acknowledged (although hardly ever tested within families), little is known about the timing of these transactional processes. A dynamic systems perspective on adolescent development (Granic, 2005; Lougheed, 2020; Smith & Thelen, 2003) theorizes that transactional processes within families may unfold at various timescales. In fact, there are reasons to assume that the transactional processes between perceived parental support and adolescent depressive symptoms differ in the short term versus long term, such that increased depressive symptoms might evoke more support from parents on the short term (Gottman et al., 1996) but can lead to less parental support by longer-term relationship erosion processes
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