Dynamics of Adaptation to Secondary School: Do Cognitive and Socioemotional Within-Person Processes Predict Successful Transition?
Final Report Abstract
In the SASCHA project, we collected data in two measurement bursts of four weeks each, with ambulatory assessments at up to four daily occasions in and out of school, with samples of fourth graders right before and fifth graders right after the transition to secondary school (Gymnasium). Assessments included a broad set of constructs from the domains of motivation, emotion, and self-regulation, measured with brief self-reports and smartphonebased working-memory tasks. Main objectives of the project were (a) to investigate withinperson dynamics of and among the different constructs, that is, to capture and quantify within-person fluctuations and within-person associations of academic achievement and social adjustment and their antecedents and consequences and (b) to identify betweenperson differences in these within-person dynamics and relate those to between-person differences in the longer-term adaptation. So far, our analyses and resulting publications have mainly focused on the domain of social relatedness. There, we could demonstrate the important role of relatedness satisfaction and relatedness frustration for daily affective wellbeing and self-esteem, as well as for more successful longer-term adaptation during the phase right after school transition. In the domain of academic achievement, we could show reciprocal dynamics between goal orientations and experiences of success at the day-to-day level. Taken together, these findings demonstrate how unique insights can be gained from investigating within-person processes with intensive longitudinal methods in a phase of adapting to a new context. Besides these research findings, we provide the scientific community with insights into the feasibility of conducting intensive longitudinal studies with children in the school context, several short scales that can be used in future experience sampling studies, and two large multivariate intensive longitudinal data sets allowing for a wide array of additional analyses.
Publications
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(2019). The importance of peer relatedness at school for affective well-being in children: Between- and within-person associations. Social Development, 28(4), 873-892
Schmidt, A., Dirk, J., & Schmiedek, F.
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(2020). Dynamic reciprocal relations of achievement goal orientations with daily experiences of success and failure: An ambulatory assessment study. Submitted to Learning and Instruction
Neubauer, A. B., Schmidt, A., Schmiedek, F., & Dirk, J.
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(2020). Sleep quality and affective well-being in children’s daily lives: a pre-registered replication and exploratory extension
Neubauer, A. B., Kramer, A. C., Schmidt, A., Könen, T., Dirk, J., & Schmiedek, F.
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(2020). The bright and the dark side of peer relationships: Differential effects of relatedness satisfaction and frustration on affective well-being in children’s daily lives. Developmental Psychology, 56(8), 1532–1546
Schmidt, A., Neubauer, A. B., Dirk, J., & Schmiedek, F.
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Evaluating sociometer theory in children‘s everyday lives: Inclusion, but not exclusion by peers at school is related to within-day change in self-esteem. European Journal of Personality
Schmidt, A., Dirk, J., Neubauer, A. B., & Schmiedek, F.
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The power of everyday peer relatedness in predicting subjective well-being after the school transition. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungs- und Pädagogische Psychologie
Schmidt, A., Dirk, J., & Schmiedek, F.
