Quality of Life in Adolescence: The Role of Perceived Control, Parenting Style, and Social Support

By F. Petito, Robert Cummins. Behaviour change, 2000

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Adult levels of subjective quality of life (SQOL) are remarkably stable on a population basis. This has been explained through the operation of a homeostatic system that acts to maintain each individual's SQOL within a narrow range. However, there are good reasons to expect this homeostatic system to come under severe challenge during adolescence. Many of the variables thought to be involved in the homeostatic process are undergoing marked change during this period, including the balance between primary and secondary control, perceived social support, and interaction with parents. In order to test the stability of SQOL and the influence of these other variables, a sample of 279 adolescents between the ages of 12 to 17 years were recruited. It was found that the SQOL of the older adolescents lay below the predicted range for adults, thereby supporting the idea of a strong challenge to homeostasis during this period. A new scale to measure perceived control was found to possess a useful two-factor structure of primary and secondary control. Moreover, both of these factors, together with social support, predicted levels of SQOL, even though the levels of primary control decreased with age. Finally, adolescents who perceived an authoritarian parenting style experienced a higher SQOL than those who perceived an unengaged style. These findings contribute to our understanding of SQOL homeostasis.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3bf41d1dac37333594202a8371e54ea2d1bd0928

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Life Satisfaction and Parenting (2010, background): “In addition, Suldo and Huebner found that LS fully mediated the relationship between parental support and problem behaviors in adolescents, and partially mediated the relationships between parental control and problem behavior and between parental autonomy granting and problem behavior (Suldo and Hu”
Primary and secondary control in academic development: gender-specific implications for stress and health in college students1 (2006, background): “…control for both males, r(271) /0.11, p /0.07, and females, r(555) /0.22, p B/0.001, are consistent with previous research on these constructs in young adults (Hall, Perry, Ruthig, et al., 2006; Lackovic-Grgin et al., 2001) and adolescents (Petito & Cummins, 2000; Wadsworth & Compas, 2002).”
ENHANCING PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONTROL IN ACHIEVEMENT SETTINGS THROUGH WRITING-BASED ATTRIBUTIONAL RETRAINING (2006, background): “Consistent with recent research on secondary control in young adults (Hall et al., in press; Halliday & Graham, 2000; Petito & Cummins, 2000; Wadsworth & Compas, 2002), the measure of interpretive secondary control used in this study was also found to correspond to optimal psychological adjustment…”