Cross-Context Self-Efficacy: A Multigroup Structural Equation Model Examining the Role of Filial and Neighborhood Self-Efficacies in Adolescents' Depressive Symptoms

Background and Purpose: Bioecological models of human development integrate relevance of neighborhood strain on depressive symptomatology. For example, research has suggested that adolescents living in neighborhoods with more disorder, less collective efficacy, and fewer institutional resources have comparatively more depressive symptoms. Further, other research has suggested that adolescents’ neighborhood self-efficacy––how capable they feel of navigating their neighborhoods avoiding conflict and staying safe––may act as a cognitive mechanism transmitting some of those effects. However, the proximal family context is still accepted to exert considerable influence on adolescents’ behavioral health. This study contributes to knowledge of adolescents’ depressive symptoms in the context of interacting neighborhood and family environments by examining whether neighborhood-and-symptomatology links change according to adolescents’ perceptions of more or less efficacy at engaging in positive, communicative relationship with their caregivers (i.e., filial self-efficacy).

Method: Drawing upon social disorganization, family science, and social cognitive theories, latent variable structural equation mediation and multigroup models were estimated with an unweighted sample of 1,390 adolescents ages 9 and 12 years old at baseline. Data originated from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). This study examined group differences across adolescents with higher and lower levels of filial self-efficacy on the effect of neighborhood characteristics (disorder, presence of youth-oriented institutional resources, collective efficacy) on adolescents’ depressive symptoms both directly and indirectly through their neighborhood self-efficacy. The Monte Carlo method for assessing mediation was used and confidence intervals computed for indirect effects.

Results: Neighborhood self-efficacy and depressive symptoms were inversely related, and living in neighborhoods with more youth-centered resources predicted more neighborhood self-efficacy and fewer depressive symptoms over time. More neighborhood disorder was linked over time to less neighborhood self-efficacy. Multigroup modeling results indicated partial measurement invariance of adolescents’ neighborhood self-efficacy across groups with lower and higher levels of filial self-efficacy, but full structural invariance. Inspection of the specific neighborhood self-efficacy items for which low and high filial self-efficacy youth responded to differently and equivalently, given equal scores on neighborhood self-efficacy, reveals potential distinctions according to whether youth were positioned alone or in interaction with peers in the item stem scenarios. Findings invoke a component of social maneuverability whereby adolescents who perceive themselves to be more capable in maintaining positive relationships with their caregivers also perceive themselves as more capable of avoiding conflict and staying safe when around other peers or social groups in the neighborhood.

Conclusions: Study findings suggest that feeling more efficacious in the caregiver-child relationship confers measurable benefit to adolescents’ social interactions in the neighborhood ecology. That adolescents’ self-efficacy domains may reciprocally influence one another underscores the importance of providing youth with strengths-based activities that promote opportunities for efficacy-building. Research should further test how adolescents’ self-efficacies interact in ways that promote resilience from depressive symptoms. Considering the potential interactive nature of youths’ neighborhood and filial self-efficacies, additional research may employ latent class modeling in order to examine potential typologies of self-efficacy domains and how those typologies are linked to a variety of adolescent outcomes.