Thriving despite parental physical abuse in adolescence: A two-wave latent transition analysis on hedonic and eudaimonic violence-resilience outcome indicators
Date
2022
Authors
Kassis, Wassilis
Aksoy, Dilan
Favre, Céline Anne
Janousch, Clarissa
Artz, Sibylle Talmon-Gros
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Children
Abstract
Internationally, about 25% of all children experience physical abuse by their parents.
Despite the numerous odds against them, about 30% of adolescents who have experienced even
the most serious forms of physical abuse by their parents escape the vicious family violence cycle.
In this study, we analyzed longitudinally the data from a sample of N = 1767 seventh-grade high
school students in Switzerland on physical abuse by their parents. We did this by conducting an
online questionnaire twice within the school year. We found that in our sample, about 30% of the
participating adolescents’ parents had physically abused them. We considered violence resilience a
multi-systemic construct that included the absence of psychopathology on one hand and both forms
of well-being (psychological and subjective) on the other. Our latent construct included both feeling
good (hedonic indicators, such as high levels of self-esteem and low levels of depression/anxiety and
dissociation) and doing well (eudaimonic indicators, such as high levels of self-determination and self-efficacy
as well as low levels of aggression toward peers). By applying a person-oriented analytical
approach via latent transition analysis with a sub-sample of students who experienced physical abuse
(nw2 = 523), we identified and compared longitudinally four distinct violence-resilience patterns
and their respective trajectories. By applying to the field of resilience, one of the most compelling
insights of well-being research (Deci & Ryan, 2001), we identified violence resilience as a complex,
multidimensional latent construct that concerns hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and is not solely
based on terms of psychopathology.
Description
Keywords
parental physical abuse, adolescents, violence resilience, hedonic factors, eudaimonic factors
Citation
Kassis, W., Aksoy, D., Favre, C., Janousch, C., & Artz, S. (2022). “Thriving despite parental physical abuse in adolescence: A two-wave latent transition analysis on hedonic and eudaimonic violence-resilience outcome indicators.” Children, 9(4), 553. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9040553