Romantic Relations, Psychological Well-Being, and Social Hopelessness in Adolescence: Role of Social Support and Attributional Styles

Abstract

The study was designed to investigate the perception of adolescents’ romantic relations, and to develop a comprehensive instrument for the assessment of romantic relations. Additionally, the effect of romantic relations on psychological well-being and social hopelessness in adolescence was studied. Further, role of social support, including parental and peer support, along with attributional styles was investigated for the relationship between romantic relations and psychological well-being as well as between romantic relations and social hopelessness. The study was carried out in three phases. Phase-I was further divided into three parts with part-I involving translation of instruments using back translation method. Part-II of the phase-I consisted of a qualitative study using focus group method for development of the comprehensive measure of the perception of romantic relations. Part-III was designed to establish factorial validity of the Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents (RRS A) on a sample of 506 adolescents (both boys and girls) from different public and private colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Principal Axis Factoring with Promax rotation was used for first order exploratory factor analysis (EFA) that resulted in 13 factors consisting of 74 items and explaining 47.66% of the variance. A second order EFA was conducted that resulted in three dimensions explaining 63.84% of the variance. In the finalized scale, the Intimacy dimension consisted of seven factors i.e., Sincerity, Expectations, Sharing, Closeness, Understanding, Pleasure, and Significance. The Passion dimension consisted of three factors i.e., Motive to love, Physical Attraction, and Companionship. And Distrust dimension also consisted of three factors i.e., Disloyalty, Negative Dating Attitude, and Lack of Commitment. In the phase-II, a pilot study was conducted to establish the psychometric properties of the translated instruments to be used in the main study and to explore the data trends. For pilot study, a convenience sample of 316 adolescents was collected from different public and private colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. All of them were regular students of 11th and 12th grade. Their age range was 16 to 18 years, and both of their parents were alive. Results showed that Cronbach’s alpha values for study variables were in acceptable range. Additionally, factor structure of Urdu versions of Perceived Peer Support Scale, Attributional Style Questionnaire for DRSML QAU X Adolescents, and Well-Being Questionnaire was confirmed through Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Pearson bivariate correlation analysis was conducted to see the trends of relationships among the study variables. Results of the pilot study showed that correlations among study variables were in expected directions. Henceforth, it was concluded that the measures are suitable for further investigation to test hypotheses of the main study. Phase-III, the main study, was conducted on a convenience sample of 647 adolescents following the criteria used in the pilot study. Demographic sheet, Perceived Parental Support Scale (Kristjansson, Sigfusdottir, James, Allegrante, & Helgason, 2010), Perceived Peer Support Scale (Kristjansson et al., 2010), Attributional Style Questionnaire for Adolescents (Rodriguez-Naranjo & Cano, 2010), Social Hopelessness Questionnaire (Heisel et al., 2003), Well-Being Questionnaire (Bradley, 2000), and Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents (Cheema & Malik, 2021a) were used in the main study. Construct validity of the Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents (RRS-A), developed in first two phases of the present study, was confirmed using CFA on the main study sample. It is concluded that the structure of the romantic relations is a multidimensional concept that consists of both positive and negative dimensions. Cronbach’s alpha for dimensions ranged from .80 to .94 in three different studies i.e., study-2, study-3, and study-4. Finally, results of the main study showed that perceived peer support and perceived parental support has significant negative effect on social hopelessness and positive effect on psychological well-being. Attributional styles have significant positive effect on social hopelessness and negative effect on psychological well being. Results also indicated that intimacy, passion, distrust, motive to love, disloyalty, and lack of commitment positively predicted social hopelessness whereas distrust and disloyalty had significant negative effect on psychological well-being. Overall, findings of the correlation and multiple linear regression analyses evidenced that romantic relations have negative effect on the psychological well-being of the adolescents whereas romantic relations were positively associated with social hopelessness in adolescents. Results of moderation analysis showed that perceived DRSML QAU XI parental support negatively moderated the effect of expectations in romantic relations on psychological well-being. Furthermore, perceived peer support negatively moderated the effect of expectations in romantic relations on social hopelessness. Peer support also negatively moderated the effect of disloyalty in romantic relations on the psychological well-being. Findings of moderation analysis also indicated that gender moderated the effect of perception of distrust in romantic relations on social hopelessness. Further, gender also moderated the effect of perception of disloyalty in romantic relations on social hopelessness. It is concluded that the non-acceptance of romantic relations in religious collectivist culture of Pakistan resulted in a compromise on psychological well-being of adolescents. However, parental and peer support have potential to counter that negative effect of romantic relations. It is therefore recommended that parent and peer support in reference to romantic relations shall be promoted as a protective measure in community interventions programs. This study will help to explain perception of romantic relations in adolescents living in religious collectivist culture of Pakistan and it will also help in initiating and advancing research on this phenomenon. The findings of the study will also be helpful in planning interventions for adolescents and to help the parents and professionals to consider romantic relations in understanding and dealing with adolescents’ problems