Assessing Secondary Control and its Association with Youth Depression Symptoms

Abstract

Extensive research has linked youth depression symptoms to low levels of perceived control, using measures that reflect primary control (i.e., influencing objective conditions to make them fit one's wishes). We hypothesized that depressive symptoms are also linked to low levels of secondary control (i.e., influencing the psychological impact of objective conditions by adjusting oneself to fit them). To test the hypothesis, we developed the Secondary Control Scale for Children (SCSC), examined its psychometrics, and used it to assess the secondary controldepression symptomatology association. In a large adolescent sample, the SCSC showed factorial integrity, internal consistency, test-retest stability, convergent and discriminant validity, and accounted for more than 40% of the variance in depression symptoms. Consistent with evidence on risk and gender, depression symptoms were more strongly associated with secondary control in girls and primary control in boys. Assessing secondary control may help us understand youth depression vulnerability in girls and boys. KeywordsDepression; Adolescence; Gender; Secondary control; Primary control Theories spanning more than five decades have linked depression to low levels of perceived control (see e.g., Abramson and Sackheim 1977;Bibring 1953;Seligman 1975;Weisz et al. 2001). Numerous investigators have applied this notion to children and adolescents, with findings supporting the connection between youth depression and low perceived control, operationally defined in several ways. Research has linked youth depression to external locus of control and control beliefs (e.g., Herman-Stahl and Peterson 1999;McCauley et al. 1988), low perceived competence (e.g., Cole et al. 1999;Weisz et al. 1987), low perceived contingency between actions and outcomes (e.g., Weisz et al. 1993), perceived helplessness (e.g., Kazdin et al. 1985), attributions of failure to internal, stable, and global causes Gladstone and Kaslow 1995), and low levels of perceived competence, Correspondence to: John R. Weisz, jweisz@jbcc.harvard.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Abnorm Child Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript contingency of outcomes, and ability to achieve desired outcomes (e.g., Muris et al. 2003;Weisz et al. 2001).A common denominator of these models and findings is that they reflect one particular way of construing control, a construct labeled primary control in the two-process model of control (Morling and Evered 2006;Rothbaum et al. 1982; Weisz et al. 1984a,b). In that model, primary control entails influencing objective conditions to make them fit one's wishes. All the constructs noted above-external locus of control, low contingency, low personal competence, helplessness, and attributing failure to internal, stable, and global causes-are conceptually linked to a failure to achieve the objective outcomes and conditions individuals wish to achieve. The many research findings in...

Stressful Life Events and Child Anxiety: Examining Parent and Child Mediators

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Reducing risk for anxiety and depression in adolescents: Effects of a single-session intervention teaching that personality can change

“…Empirical research corroborates this possibility. Perceived control, defined as “a belief an individual holds about the nature of control over situational factors and events” (Weems & Silverman, 2006; p. 117), has been identified as a key factor in appraisals of and reactions to stressful events (Cheng & Cheung, 2005), with low perceived control showing cross-sectional and longitudinal associations with youth anxiety and depressive disorders ( Ballash, Pemble, Usui, Buckley, & Woodruff-Borden, 2006; Chorpita, Brown, & Barlow, 1998; Muris, Meesters, Schouten, & Hoge, 2004; Rothbaum et al, 1982; Weisz et al, 2010 ) . A recent meta-analysis of 51 studies found a large, negative cross-sectional association between perceived control and both trait measures of anxiety and disorder-specific measures of anxiety, across all types of anxiety disorders, in both children and adults (Gallagher, Bentley, & Barlow, 2014).…”

“…Further, in a recent study, a single-session growth personality mindset intervention reduced the development of depressive symptoms in a community sample of adolescents, supporting these theories as promising prevention targets—even when taught in an extremely brief format (Miu & Yeager, 2015). Based on this work, we evaluated whether a mindset intervention could reduce two well-established risk factors for internalizing problems in youths: low perceived control (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982; Schouten, & Hoge, 2004; Weisz, Francis, & Bearman, 2010) and prolonged recovery from social stress (Prinstein & Aikens, 2004). We predicted that youths receiving the intervention would experience greater improvements in perceived control, and recover from a social stress task more rapidly, compared to youths receiving a comparison intervention.…”

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