Ego-resiliency and perceived social support in late childhood: A latent growth modeling approach

Abstract

This study explored the change trajectory of schoolchildren’s ego-resiliency and perceived social support and investigated the effect of perceived social support on ego-resiliency across four time points. A sample of 437 children aged 8–13 years (M = 10.99, SD = 0.70, 51.5% boys) completed assessments at four time points. The results indicated that ego-resiliency showed an increasing linear trend and perceived social support showed a declining linear trend. Perceived social support had a positive effect on ego-resiliency over time. In addition, the initial status of perceived social support negatively predicted the growth trend of ego-resiliency, and the initial status of ego-resili-ency negatively predicted the declining trend of perceived social support. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.