Elsevier

Journal of Adolescent Health

Volume 43, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 209-216
Journal of Adolescent Health

Review article
Connectedness in the Lives of Children and Adolescents: A Call for Greater Conceptual Clarity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.01.012Get rights and content

Abstract

Studies of the role of connectedness in the health and development of children and adolescents are accumulating rapidly. Although findings are uniformly consistent in documenting its correlation with a host of health indicators, the construct is in need of substantial conceptual clarification to maximize its research and applied utility. Current conceptualizations and operationalizations inconsistently span a wide spectrum of varied elements of social experience—including the quality of a relationship, the degree of liking an environment or relationship, the quality of performance in an environment or relationship, the possession of feelings or attitude states, and a combination of states and the behaviors that antecede them—resulting in an ability to adequately understand what the construct is and how, why, and when it is most protective. This paper documents this variability in an effort to sensitize researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to the complexity of the construct. It further describes one ongoing, multicultural research project that is currently informing international health initiatives as an illustration of one approach to addressing the complexity with goals of precision, parsimony, cultural sensitivity, and applied utility.

Section snippets

Levels of Abstraction

The origins of the connectedness construct can be found in a number of areas of research. While characterizing American society as disconnecting and alienating, sociologist Philip Slater [1] noted the human desires for interaction with others and for the development of a sense of community. In developmental psychology, researchers have examined adolescents' beliefs about the importance of independence and about the significance of social institutions [2], [3]. More recently, researchers have

Analogues to Connectedness

To add to this variety of conceptualization and measurement, there are several related constructs that researchers invoke when describing connectedness. However, like for the reference to the Grotevant and Cooper [8] study, current definitions or, moreso, operationalizations, of connectedness are not entirely consistent with the labeling or conceptualization. For example, the term attachment is often used interchangeably with the term connectedness, despite the fact that many attachment

Refining the Research on Connectedness

Despite the disparity and inconsistency with which connectedness has been rendered and studied, two themes are evident that could be pursued to advance its study, in part because they both are consonant with much relevant existing literature that has been developed outside the specific domains of adolescent health. The first theme has to do with the consistent reference in the reviewed literatures to two basic elements of connectedness: (1) a relational component, that is, the connection or

Connection, Regulation, and Respect for Individuality

One current research project serves as an illustration of how several of the issues of concern raised here about the study of connectedness can be addressed. The Cross-National Adolescence Project (C-NAP) [51], a large-scale, adolescent reported study has focused explicitly on identifying central dimensions of parenting. It drew from the extensive parent–child socialization literatures in developmental psychology and sociology in formulating and testing a framework of how specific dimensions of

Conclusion

The increasing accumulation of studies in adolescent and school health journals on connectedness demonstrates a welcome recognition of and appreciation for the value to children and adolescents of their social experiences with individuals and with institutions. The solid consistency of the findings that these connections are positively related to a variety of indices of health and development meaningfully endorses this attention and recommends continued efforts to expand the work. To be most

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