Chapter 3 90 Depressive Symptoms The subscale Emotional Problems of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997) assessed depressive symptoms. This subscale consisted of five items (e.g., “I am often unhappy, depressed, or tearful”) and the response scale ranged from 0 (not true) to 2 (certainly true). The internal consistency of the scale was moderate to acceptable and ranged from .63 to .71, and a sum score was created. Neuroticism Neuroticism was measured at T9, thus this data was only available for Batch 3. It was measured with five items (e.g., “I easily become nervous and insecure”) of a shortened version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-K; Rammstedt & John, 2005). The response scale ranged from 1 (absolutely incorrect) to 5 (absolutely correct) and internal consistency was acceptable (α = .72). METHOD DATASET 5 (BIENNIAL) Participants Data were used from the fifth (T1, 2007), sixth (T2, 2009), and seventh wave (T3, 2012) of the Flemish Study on Parenting, Personality, and Development (Prinzie et al., 2003). Only in these three waves, the variables of interest were measured. Hence, the time interval between measurement occasions were 2 and 3 years, respectively. The sample consisted of 503 Belgian adolescents at T1 (48.1% male, Mage = 13.82 years, SDage = 1.14, age range = 10-16 years). A small group of the adolescents were in elementary education at T1 (15.5%). Adolescents in secondary school followed the following tracks: vocational education (3.6%), higher general secondary education (15.9%), preuniversity secondary education (57.9%), or unknown for 7.2%. All adolescents and parents were native Belgians. Most of their parents were married (81.5%). A minority was divorced (10.3%) or passed away (1.0%), and for 7.2% this information was missing. Parental educational level for fathers (F) and mothers (M) was diverse: elementary school (F: 2.2%, M: 0.4%), secondary school (F: 31.6%, M: 26.5%), higher education nonuniversity (F: 25.1%, M: 36.4%), university (F: 15.1%, M: 10.5%), and unknown (F: 26.0%, M: 26.2%). Values of the scales of the study variables were missing completely at random (Little’s MCAR test χ2(48) = 62.02, p = .084, χ2/df = 1.29).
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