In this study, we adopted parenting styles as a multidimensional and latent construct that includes different aspects of parenting, rather than solely focusing on a single parenting style. In a Web-based survey with 1203 Greek parents, we identified parenting styles and their SDQ reports on their children. According to our results by Latent Profile Analysis, we must use a more complex approach concerning parenting styles. We identified a “Highly Authoritative style” profile with high levels of authoritative, low levels of authoritarian and middle levels of permissive parenting styles. We additionally identified a profile called “Relaxed Authoritative style”, with still high but lower levels of authoritative style, low but slightly heightened levels of authoritarian style, and middle levels of permissive style. A further profile, named “Permissive Focused Authoritative style”, had a mix of high levels of authoritative, moderate levels of permissive, and elevated levels of authoritarian parenting styles. Finally, in a profile named “Inconsistent Parenting style”, we identified parents with a blend of still high, but the lowest of all four levels of authoritative and highest levels of permissive and authoritarian parenting styles. When combining the four identified parenting patterns with the SDQ results, we identified the “highly authoritative parenting style” profile to be the least connected to internalizing or externalizing problems of the respective children.

Previous research on adolescent peer networks has mainly focused on friendship networks and their association with violence, but very limited research is available on peer rejection networks. This lack of knowledge hinders the effectiveness of preventing peer rejection and its negative effects. Based on the theory of the cycle of violence, the present study examines the extent to which parental physical abuse experiences, aggressive behavior toward peers and acceptance of violence are related to peer rejection networks at school. Social network analysis with a stochastic actor-oriented model of longitudinal data collected from high school students (Wave 1, n = 620; Wave 2, n = 590) confirms that adolescents who frequently use aggression toward their peers are more likely to be rejected, especially if those adolescents have experienced abuse. Similarly, peers are more likely to reject adolescents with high levels of accepting violence. The results also show that aggression toward peers generally tends to decrease over time but not for adolescents who reject a larger number of students. For students who reject many peers, aggression frequency increases. From the perspective of resilience theory, peer rejection, when combined with aggression toward peers and acceptance of violence, particularly in female adolescents, creates a significant risk factor for socio-emotional development. Therefore, tackling violence attitudes, experiences and behavior in the school environment and at home is crucial in overcoming the cycle of violence.

We investigated students’ resilience predictors during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a two-wave longitudinal sample (n = 713) of students from Greece, Germany, and Switzerland (eighth grade in autumn 2020 and ninth grade in autumn 2021), we determined which social and individual predictors longitudinally predicted resilience before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified the high likelihood of individual factors (self-esteem, self-efficacy) fostering resilience by social factors (teacher, parents, and social resources). Multigroup structural equation modeling analyses demonstrated that the adolescent population was best typified by two growth trajectory classes: a low-anxiety class characterized by a low initial level of depression/anxiety and a high-anxiety class characterized by a higher initial level of depression/anxiety. The model was gender-, migration-, and country-invariant. Overall, the model showed that teachers overlook adolescents with high anxiety or depression levels, but parents support them more. These findings highlight the necessity to pay attention to students’ depression or anxiety symptoms and to satisfy their basic psychological needs, as vital prerequisites for their meaningful, coherent engagement in modern societies despite the odds.

Internationally, about 25% of all children experience physical abuse by their parents. Despite the numerous odds against them, about 30% of adolescents who have experienced even the most serious forms of physical abuse by their parents escape the vicious family violence cycle. In this study, we analyzed longitudinally the data from a sample of N = 1767 seventh-grade high school students in Switzerland on physical abuse by their parents. We did this by conducting an online questionnaire twice within the school year. We found that in our sample, about 30% of the participating adolescents’ parents had physically abused them. We considered violence resilience a multi-systemic construct that included the absence of psychopathology on one hand and both forms of well-being (psychological and subjective) on the other. Our latent construct included both feeling good (hedonic indicators, such as high levels of self-esteem and low levels of depression/anxiety and dissociation) and doing well (eudaimonic indicators, such as high levels of self-determination and self-efficacy as well as low levels of aggression toward peers). By applying a person-oriented analytical approach via latent transition analysis with a sub-sample of students who experienced physical abuse (n_w2 = 523), we identified and compared longitudinally four distinct violence-resilience patterns and their respective trajectories. By applying to the field of resilience, one of the most compelling insights of well-being research (Deci & Ryan, 2001), we identified violence resilience as a complex, multidimensional latent construct that concerns hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and is not solely based on terms of psychopathology.

Research has well established that parental physical abuse experiences can lead to devastating consequences for adolescents, with peer relationships acting as both protective and risk factors. With the person-centered latent profile analysis (LPA), we analyzed questionnaire data from a cross-sectional study in 2020 composed of a sample of 1959 seventh-grade high school students from Switzerland. This study investigated and compared peer-status profiles combining peer acceptance and peer popularity for adolescents with and without parental physical abuse experiences. We conducted a multinomial logistic regression analysis to investigate further depression, anxiety, and dissociation as predictors of profile membership. With LPA, we identified three distinct profiles for adolescents within the subgroup with experiences of parental physical abuse (n = 344), namely liked, liked-popular, and rejected-unpopular. Within the subgroup of adolescents without parental physical abuse experiences (n = 1565), LPA revealed four profiles, namely liked, liked-popular, rejected-unpopular, and average. For adolescents with parental physical abuse experiences, higher levels of dissociation significantly indicated they were more likely to belong to the rejected-unpopular group than belong to the liked group. Anxious students without experiences of parental physical abuse were more likely to belong to the rejected-unpopular and liked profiles than belong to the liked-popular and average profiles. These findings clearly argue for a deeper understanding of the role of parental physical abuse when analyzing the relationship between dissociation and anxiety and peer status. Operationalizing peer status with the four individual dimensions of likeability, rejection, popularity, and unpopularity was valuable in that the role of peer rejection with respect to different internalizing symptoms became apparent.

Despite the serious emotional and social consequences of adolescents’ exposure to intimate-partner violence (IPV) and the high prevalence of this exposure, few analyses have focused on person-centered models or considered psychological IPV. Studies that address exposure to violence tend to focus on physical IPV. Therefore, in this study, we examine (across two waves) the trajectories of resilience among adolescents who have witnessed psychological IPV by conducting a latent transition analysis and predicting class membership through socio-demographic and individual-level protective factors. Using a sample of 879 (T1, fall 2020) and 770 (T2, spring 2022) adolescent Swiss students with mean ages of 11.74 (SD = 0.64) and 13.77 (SD = 0.53), we identified four distinct time-invariant resilience classes: comorbid-frustrated, internalizing-frustrated, comorbid-satisfied, and resilient. The classes characterized by some level of psychopathological symptoms and basic psychological-needs frustration were the most stable over time. Furthermore, we found the four typical resilience trajectories: recovery, chronic, delayed, and improving. Gender, socioeconomic background, and protective factors showed a significant prediction of class membership in wave 1, highlighting the importance of increasing sensitivity to psychological-IPV exposure on the one hand, and reinforcing the relevance of prevention in schools regarding the promotion of protective factors on the other.