Flexibility and psychological well-being of adolescents: the case in 512 Sichuan earthquake

Abstract

Traumatic events such as natural disasters and violence are still happening around the world. While most of the studies on traumatic events focus more on the pathological end of the continuum, research related to their impact on more generic aspects, such as the psychological well-being of individuals, is comparatively less. Furthermore, flexibility has been posited to play a crucial role in the development of psychological well-being in adolescents but its significance has seldom been examined in the context of traumatic events. In addition, the construct and characteristics of flexibility have never been discussed before and no self-report measurement of emotional flexibility exists. Therefore, this thesis attempts to fill these gaps and extend our understanding of both the knowledge of flexibility and its role in the psychological well-being of Chinese adolescents. The nature of study 1 represents the ground work of this research, with the purpose of developing and validating a qualified self-report measurement of emotional flexibility in order to lay the foundation for answering the main research question of this study. A panel meeting was used at the very beginning to generate an item pool consisting of an inventory of emotional flexibility subscales: Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were employed to test the subscale structures as well as for the total scale of emotional flexibility. A three-factor model for match, the subscale of emotional flexibility and the total model comprising one higher-order factor of emotional flexibility derived from the 5 first-order factors, with 10 and 30 items respectively, have all been confirmed. The purpose of study 2 is to clarify the construct of flexibility by investigating the relationships connected to flexibility in cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects, as well as the relation between flexibility in these three aspects and coping flexibility. The participants in study 2 were 941 adolescents recruited from three middle schools with different levels of earthquake exposure in Sichuan. The results show that cognitive flexibility mediates the relationship between emotional flexibility and behavioral flexibility. Moreover, coping flexibility was found to be related to flexibility in three aspects in different manners. Study 3 has been designed to answer the main research question of this study: what role does flexibility play in the psychological well-being of adolescents with earthquake experiences. A cross-sectional survey was performed to test the effect of flexibility in cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects on the relationship between earthquake exposure and psychological well-being. The data in this study was the same as for those in study two. The results show that emotional flexibility and cognitive flexibility had moderating effects between earthquake exposure and psychological well-being. The thesis has developed a measurement tool, clarified the construct and summarized the characteristics of flexibility as well as explored the role of flexibility in the psychological well-being of adolescents. The implications and limitations as well as future directions are proposed as well.