De relatie tussen sociale vaardigheden en gevoelens van verbondenheid van adolescenten tijdens de coronacrisis

Abstract

Background. The Covid-19 crisis has had an influence on adolescents’ lives for the past year, which potential negative effects on their feelings of connectedness. This feeling is crucial for the development of emotional regulation and psychosocial wellbeing. One of the factors that influence this feeling of connectedness, might be the degree of social skills that adolescents possess. The Covid-19 crisis has had a significant impact on the amount of face-to-face contact of adolescents. Because this might influence their wellbeing in several ways, it is important to research whether social skills influence these feelings of connectedness. The aim of this research is to study the link between social skills and Covid-19-related connectedness change during the Covid-19 crisis of adolescents between 12 and 16 years old and whether gender acts as a moderator. Method. Data from the Stress Less Project has been used. The Dutch questionnaire Scale for Interpersonal Behavior (SIG-A) was carried out among 179 adolescents from four high schools in The Hague to measure their social skills. Connectedness was measured by four questions that were developed. In de current research, these questions were separated into connectedness with friends, family, neighborhood and the Dutch society. The relationship between the variable social skills and the subscales of connectedness were measured by multiple singular linear regression analyses. In addition, the influence of the moderator gender was measured by multiple PROCESS analyses. Results. The results showed a positive relationship between social skills and the subscales of connectedness of adolescents, except for the relationship between social skills and feelings of connectedness with the Dutch society. No effect of gender was found for the subdivisions of connectedness. Conclusion. The results indicate that more social skills predict more Covid-19-related connectedness during the Covid-19 pandemic. These results can have a positive contribution to society, because interventions could focus on the degree of social skills of adolescents which could improve the feelings of connectedness. This could in turn decrease the chance of psychological problems.