Long‐term effects of a preventive intervention on multiple components of adolescents' emotional insecurity

Abstract

A gap in research on family interventions is the understanding of long‐term effects on hypothesized mechanisms of effect regarding children's processes of responding to family stressors. This study assessed the long‐term effects of an intervention designed to improve interparental and family conflict resolution on adolescents' emotional insecurity about interparental conflict. Emotional insecurity about interparental conflict has long been linked with adolescents' risk for adjustment problems. These findings have motivated the development of several family‐based preventive interventions, one of which is the focus of this study. A community sample of 225 adolescents and their parents participated in an RCT‐based study of an intervention designed to reduce adolescent's emotional insecurity about interparental conflict. The intervention's effect on patterns of change in adolescents', mothers', and fathers' reports of the three components of adolescents' emotional insecurity (emotional reactivity, behavioral dysregulation, and cognitive representations) from posttest through the 3‐year follow‐up were examined using multilevel modeling. Results suggested that the intervention predicted immediate (pre to posttest) and long‐term linear decreases in emotional reactivity, as well as long‐term quadratic change in behavioral dysregulation. These findings support the beneficial effects of a brief intervention on multiple components of emotional security. The results also underscore the importance of considering the potential of long‐term (including nonlinear) patterns of change that may occur as a function of family‐based interventions, as well as that the impact of family‐based interventions may vary as a function of reporter and component of emotional insecurity.