The three-year trajectory of students’ school adaptation in secondary school and its longitudinal associations with trust, prospects, and positivity towards stress

ABSTRACT

This three-year longitudinal study attempted to clarify the overall trajectory of secondary school students’ school adaptation, its individual patterns, and longitudinal relations with three internal protective factors: interpersonal trust, prospects, and positivity towards stress. An anonymous survey on school adaptation, recent stressor severity, and the three internal factors was conducted every semester for three years. Data from 147 students (78 boys, 68 girls, and 1 unknown) were analysed. The results showed a tendency for school adaptation to decline around the second year, which was the same as in previous research; however, there were eight patterns, including stable or increased trajectories. Moreover, a positive longitudinal relationship was confirmed between school adaptation and interpersonal trust. The results highlighted the importance of timely preventive interventions creating a trustful environment. Also, based on the development of interpersonal trust, a possible mechanism of the decline in school adaptation and reinterpretation of the phenomenon was suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• Longitudinal research
• school adaptation
• secondary school
• trust
• Latent profile analysis (LPA)
• Autoregressive latent trajectory models (ALTMs)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Kyoko Amai, upon reasonable request. The analysis codes are available for download from the open science framework directory (https://osf.io/se8pn/?view_only = 0bb3358aa13e440d8ca9e7320b577fed).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of Life Science Research Ethics and Safety in the University of Tokyo under the approval number 18–93, and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from the school principals and all individual participants included in the study. Parents were informed in writing of the purpose, contents, and privacy policy of the survey beforehand; and the school principal submitted a consent form on behalf of the students’ parents.

Notes

1. The research site and school were selected for two reasons. First, the city was a typical provincial city without extreme gaps in wealth and education that are observed in large metropolitan areas. The school comprised an ordinary public school that was not designated as a special research school in an area with an average economic situation. Second, the first author had conducted another research beforehand at the school.

2. Students wrote their grade, class, gender, and birthday on the face sheet of the questionnaire. The information was used for connecting the data from different time points.

3. Time 7 (T7) and Time 8 (T8) were observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were several months of school closure and online classes between Time 6 (T6) and T7, but none of the variables at T7 showed a statistically significant decline compared to the pre-pandemic scores.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) under Grant number 18J20397 and 21J40150. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not reflect the views of the funder, JSPS.

Notes on contributors

Kyoko Amai

Kyoko Amai is a project associate professor at Chiba University specializing in school psychology and developmental psychology. She conducts research regarding mental health in adolescence. Especially, the mentality of adolescents who do not seek nor accept support from others and novel support systems for them are her recent research focuses. For more information, please refer to https://researchmap.jp/KyokoAmai?lang=en.