Peer victimization linked to negative affect in children with and without ADHD

Peer Bullying Victimization Trajectories for Sexually and Gender Diverse Youth from Early Childhood to Late Adolescence

Sexually and gender diverse (SGD) youth experience more peer bullying victimization than heterosexual, cisgender youth during adolescence, yet the emergence and persistence of these disparities remain underexplored. Also, it is unclear which factors are associated with these disparities across development, and how these disparities are linked to late adolescent health discrepancies. This study utilized the sample from the Millennium Cohort Study in Britain (N = 10,080; 51.3% assigned female at birth; Mage = 2.28, SDage = 0.46 at Wave 2), in which 23.74% of youth reported non-heterosexual attraction, 21.59% reported non-heterosexual identity, and 1.08% reported gender identity not in line with the sex assigned at birth. Using latent class growth modeling, four peer bullying victimization trajectories were identified, with early peak (7.2%), late childhood peak (6.3%), adolescence onset (12.8%), and low (73.6%) rates of victimization. SGD youth, compared to heterosexual and cisgender youth, were found to have increased odds of being in the victimization-involved classes, especially the adolescence onset class. The study further revealed that SGD youth reported more mental health and relational difficulties in childhood, which were linked to their heightened risk of longer-lasting victimization. Further, long-term victimization was found to partially account for the disparities in health and well-being for SGD youth in late adolescence. In conclusion, SGD youth were more likely to experience longer-lasting bullying victimization during childhood and adolescence, its related mental and relational vulnerabilities were already established in childhood, and such victimization disparities were further linked to their detrimental health and well-being in late adolescence. The design, hypotheses, and target analyses of the current study were preregistered on 21st April 2023 at https://osf.io/f2zxy .

Feasibility of Using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) to Collect Daily Experiences of Parent-Child Dyads: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

BACKGROUND

Intensive longitudinal data collection, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA), has the potential to reduce recall biases, collect more ecologically valid data, and increase our understanding of dynamic associations between variables. EMA is typically administered using an application that is downloaded on participants' devices, which presents cost and privacy concerns that may limit its use. Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a web-based survey application freely available to nonprofit organizations, may allow researchers to overcome these barriers; however, at present, little guidance is available to researchers regarding the setup of EMA in REDCap, especially for those who are new to using REDCap or lack advanced programming expertise.

OBJECTIVE

We provide an example of a simplified EMA setup in REDCap. This study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. We provide information on survey completion and user behavior in a sample of parents and children recruited across Canada.

METHODS

We recruited 66 parents and their children (aged 9-13 years old) from an existing longitudinal cohort study to participate in a study on risk and protective factors for children's mental health. Parents received survey prompts (morning and evening) by email or SMS text message for 14 days, twice daily. Each survey prompt contained 2 sections, one for parents and one for children to complete.

RESULTS

The completion rates were good (mean 82%, SD 8%) and significantly higher on weekdays than weekends and in dyads with girls than dyads with boys. Children were available to respond to their own survey questions most of the time (in 1134/1498, 75.7% of surveys submitted). The number of assessments submitted was significantly higher, and response times were significantly faster among participants who selected SMS text message survey notifications compared to email survey notifications. The average response time was 47.0 minutes after the initial survey notification, and the use of reminder messages increased survey completion.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support the feasibility of using REDCap for EMA studies with parents and children. REDCap also has features that can accommodate EMA studies by recruiting participants across multiple time zones and providing different survey delivery methods. Offering the option of SMS text message survey notifications and reminders may be an important way to increase completion rates and the timeliness of responses. REDCap is a potentially useful tool for researchers wishing to implement EMA in settings in which cost or privacy are current barriers. Researchers should weigh these benefits with the potential limitations of REDCap and this design, including staff time to set up, monitor, and clean the data outputs of the project.

Psychological Treatments for Hyperactivity and Impulsivity in Children with ADHD: A Narrative Review

Treatment of the ADHD types (hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and combined) in children has rarely been studied separately, although their prognostic courses differ widely. In addition, data show that improvements in hyperactivity/impulsivity are hard to achieve. Thus, we focused on treatments tailored to hyperactivity/impulsivity. We examined meta-analyses and systematic reviews within the inter- and intra-individual treatments and found that psychoeducation and training for parents, school-based interventions, reinforcement strategies, and neurofeedback consistently showed small to moderate effect sizes in reducing hyperactivity/impulsivity in children. Conversely, emotional self-regulation, social skills, and cognitive trainings showed unsatisfactory results. In summary, we found that the quality of usual care can be surpassed when the designated interventions are purposefully combined into a multimodal treatment program.

Building an ecological momentary assessment smartphone app for 4- to 10-year-old children: A pilot study

OBJECTIVE

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) minimizes recall burden and maximizes ecological validity and has emerged as a valuable tool to characterize individual differences, assess contextual associations, and document temporal associations. However, EMA has yet to be reliably utilized in young children, in part due to concerns about responder reliability and limited compliance. The present study addressed these concerns by building a developmentally appropriate EMA smartphone app and testing the app for feasibility and usability with young children ages 4-10 (N = 20; m age = 7.7, SD = 2.0).

METHODS

To pilot test the app, children completed an 11-item survey about their mood and behavior twice a day for 14 days. Parents also completed brief surveys twice a day to allow for parent-child comparisons of responses. Finally, at the end of the two weeks, parents provided user feedback on the smartphone app.

RESULTS

Results indicated a high response rate (nearly 90%) across child surveys and high agreement between parents and children ranging from 0.89-0.97.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, findings suggest that this developmentally appropriate EMA smartphone app is a reliable and valid tool for collecting in-the-moment data from young children outside of a laboratory setting.

Youth Psychopathology in Daily Life: Systematically Reviewed Characteristics and Potentials of Ecological Momentary Assessment Applications

Traditionally, symptoms of youth psychopathology are assessed with questionnaires, clinical interviews, or laboratory observations. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) could be a particularly valuable additional methodology, since EMA enables examining the daily lives of youths near real-time, considering fluctuations and specific contexts of symptoms. This systematic review aimed to review the characteristics of current EMA applications and to provide a synthesis of their potential in studying youth psychopathology. Following a systematic search in PsycInfo and Medline, we identified 50 studies in clinical samples. Most studies used EMA to examine fluctuations in symptoms, affect, and behavior, and the relation with contextual factors. EMA was also used to investigate interactions between parents and their children over time, and to monitor and predict treatment response. EMA appeared feasible in youth and could provide valuable insights that contribute to understanding youth psychopathology. Benefits, gaps, and suggestions for future research and clinical practice are discussed.

In-person victimization, cyber victimization, and polyvictimization in relation to internalizing symptoms and self-esteem in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

BACKGROUND

There is mixed evidence for whether in-person victimization and cyber victimization are differentially linked to internalizing symptoms and self-esteem among adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The goals of the present study were to (1) evaluate in-person victimization and cyber victimization in relation to internalizing symptoms (i.e., anxiety and depression) and self-esteem and (2) examine differences in internalizing symptoms and self-esteem between in-person victimization, cyber victimization, and polyvictimization (i.e., both in-person victimization and cyber victimization).

METHODS

Participants were 78 adolescents (ages 13-17 years) diagnosed with ADHD who completed ratings of in-person victimization, cyber victimization, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem. Parents completed ratings of their adolescent's anxiety and depression.

RESULTS

Adolescents with ADHD reported experiencing higher rates of in-person victimization (64%) than cyber victimization (23%) in the last 30 days. In addition, 22% reported that they experienced polyvictimization. In-person victimization was associated with higher adolescent-reported anxiety symptoms, whereas cyber victimization was associated with higher parent-reported depressive symptoms; both were associated with lower adolescent-reported self-esteem. Adolescents who reported polyvictimization reported the highest anxiety and depressive symptoms and the lowest self-esteem.

CONCLUSIONS

Approximately one quarter of adolescents with ADHD report experiencing polyvictimization in the past month. Findings indicate that in-person victimization and cyber victimization are each uniquely associated with lower self-esteem and differentially associated with co-occurring internalizing symptoms among adolescents with ADHD. Polyvictimization is especially linked to higher internalizing symptoms and lower self-esteem. Longitudinal studies are needed to better understand the directionality of these associations.

Too Connected to Being Connected? Adolescents' Social Media Emotional Investment Moderates the Association between Cybervictimization and Internalizing Symptoms

This study examined whether the association between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms was moderated by adolescents' emotional connectedness to their social media. Participants were 288 adolescents (54.9% male participants) with (n = 151) and without (n = 137) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) between the ages of 13 and 15 years (M = 14.09, SD = 0.36). Adolescents reported on social integration and emotional connection (SIEC) to social media and parents reported on their impression of their adolescent's SIEC to social media. Adolescents also reported on cybervictimization experiences and internalizing symptoms. Adolescents with ADHD had higher cybervictimization scores than adolescents without ADHD and were also more likely to report multiple experiences of cybervictimization over the past month. Emotional investment in social media moderated the relations between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms such that cybervictimization was associated with higher anxiety and depression symptoms at higher levels of emotional investment in social media. Results were consistent across both parent and adolescent report of social integration and emotional connection to social media. These findings indicate that cybervictimization may be associated with negative outcomes specifically among adolescents with a strong emotional connection to their social media use.

Using e-diaries to investigate ADHD - State-of-the-art and the promising feature of just-in-time-adaptive interventions

Attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is characterized by symptoms which are dynamic in nature: states of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity as core symptoms, and emotion dysregulation as associated feature. Although tremendous work has been done to investigate between-subject differences (how patients with ADHD differ from healthy controls or patients with other disorders), little is known about the relationship between symptoms with triggers and contexts, that may allow us to better understand their causes and consequences. Understanding the temporal associations between symptoms and environmental triggers in an ecologically valid manner may be the basis to developing just-in-time adaptive interventions. Fortunately, recent years have seen advances in methodology, hardware and innovative statistical approaches to study dynamic processes in daily life. In this narrative review, we provide a description of the methodology (ambulatory assessment), summarize the existing literature in ADHD, and discuss future prospects for these methods, namely mobile sensing to assess contextual information, real-time analyses and just-in-time adaptive interventions.

Ecological momentary assessment of contextual variables, satisfaction, and emotional and behavioral states of adolescents by level of victimization

The harmful effects of victimization on mental health have been demonstrated in several age groups, cultures, and populations, but there is wide variability in the resulting psychopathology. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) allows the expression of an emotional state to be recorded at any given time and linked to a situation or context. This study aimed to analyze the contextual variables (where, with whom, and what), momentary satisfaction, and perception of momentary emotional and behavioral symptoms in a cohort of adolescents by the level of victimization, using EMA. We explored the everyday symptom profiles and the contexts in which events took place among 100 adolescents over a one-week period. Sociodemographic data were collected and assessment was done using the EMA (as a smartphone application) and the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (to assess childhood and adolescent victimization). In this study, regarding contextual variables, the group with the highest level of victimization (top 10%) showed a significant relationship with being away from home and being with friends other than classmates, and not being with parents or relatives. There was also an unexpectedly higher frequency of sporting engagement in this group. A relationship existed between emotional and behavioral problems and higher levels of victimization. In conclusion, the different groups of victimized subjects present a relatively high level of satisfaction in relation to the daily contexts and show low levels of emotional and behavioral symptomatology.