Adolescents’ cognitive-emotional functioning as predicted by family atmosphere and school environment

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the impact of family atmosphere and school environment on adolescents’ cognitive-emotional functioning. Survey data from 1064 adolescent students were collected about their cognitive emotion regulation (adaptive and less adaptive), emotional intelligence, future aspiration, school motivation, school engagement, hopelessness, and hostility which were assumed to reflect their cognitiveemotional functioning. Preliminary analyses of the data in MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) using gender, socio-economic status, and family type as the independent variables revealed that it was only gender that has significant overall effect on a linear combination of the eight dependent variables. The univariate results further showed that gender has a significant effect on adaptive cognitive emotion regulation and school motivation, but not on the remaining six variables. So, the main analyses were done in two stages, using family atmosphere and school environment as the predictors in both the stages. In the first stage, both adaptive cognitive emotion regulation and school motivation data were subjected to multivariate multiple regression analysis, separately for female and male participants (data were collapsed across the levels of socioeconomic status and family type). Results demonstrated that family atmosphere and school environment have significant positive effects on school motivation in both female and male participants. Family atmosphere has further significant positive effect on adaptive cognitive emotion regulation in male but not in female participants whereas school environment has further significant positive effect on adaptive cognitive emotion regulation in female but not in male participants. In the second stage of the main analysis, data for the remaining six variables, such as less adaptive cognitive emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, future aspiration, school engagement, hopelessness, and hostility, were collapsed across the levels of gender, socio-economic status, and family type, and analyzed in MANOVA using family atmosphere and school environment as the predictors. The multivariate results demonstrated that the overall regression model was significant, indicating that family atmosphere and school environment have significant overall effect on a linear combination of all the six aspects of cognitive-emotional functioning in adolescents. The univariate results showed the significant main effects of the predictors on each of the six functional aspects of adolescent behaviors. Parameter estimates indicated that both family atmosphere and school environment have significant positive effects on emotional intelligence, future aspiration, and school engagement in adolescents, and negative effects on their hoplessness and hostility. Consistently, family atmosphere demonstrated a negative effect on their less adaptive cognitive emotion regulation; however, school environment demonstrated a positive effect on this variable unexpectedly. The implications of these findings for theory, research, and practice are discussed.