DOI: 10.5061/dryad.nzs7h44mm
title: Because You Had a Bad Day: General and Daily Relations between Reactive Temperament, Emotion Regulation, and Depressive Symptoms in Youth

description: Negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) have repeatedly
 shown to act as vulnerability factors for youth depression. Less research
 examined the mechanisms through which these reactive temperament traits
 may differently confer vulnerability to depression. Based on recent
 integrated models of depression proposing emotion regulation as a key
 underlying mechanism, the current study aimed to clarify the general and
 day-to-day relations among temperament, emotion regulation strategies, and
 depressive symptoms in Dutch-speaking youth (35% boys; M_age = 13.27
 years, SD = 1.98) using a cross-sectional (n = 495) and a 7-day daily
 diary design (n = 469). Self-reported temperament, trait rumination, trait
 positive refocusing, and depressive symptoms were measured at baseline.
 State rumination, state positive refocusing, and depressive symptoms were
 further assessed daily. Whereas results revealed that NE and PE interacted
 in predicting baseline and daily depressive symptoms, the cross-sectional
 analyses provide preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that NE and PE
 each provide unique pathways for understanding vulnerability to
 depression. Additional analyses in the daily diary study showed NE to be
 significantly related to trajectories of state rumination. Results
 contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the associations between
 temperament, emotion regulation strategies, and depressive symptoms in
 youth. 
description: The current study is part of larger research project on emotional
 wellbeing in youth at the Clinical Developmental Psychopathology
 Department of Ghent University. The protocol of the study was approved by
 the Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational
 Sciences at Ghent University. Third-year psychology students were
 instructed to recruit two Dutch-speaking participants between age 10 and
 16 of the Belgian–Flemish population with which they were not emotionally
 involved (no family, friends, etc.) and visit them at home. No other in-
 or exclusion criteria were put forward. After obtaining both child and
 parental written informed consent, participants were asked to fill out a
 paper and pencil test battery comprising measures of overall
 psychopathology, reactive temperament, and trait ER strategies in a
 separate room at home. During the assessment, one of the students remained
 present in the room to answer questions pertaining to the test battery.
 After completing the home-assessment, participants were asked to
 participate in the 7-day daily diary study. In the daily diary study,
 participants were instructed to fill out a shortened test battery on a
 secure online platform hosted by the Department of Developmental,
 Personality, and Social Psychology on their own computer at home, starting
 from the following Monday. The online test battery consisted of three
 scales assessing (daily) depressive symptoms, state rumination, and state
 positive refocusing. Participants were told to complete the diary on a
 daily basis before bedtime. The participants’ parents were given
 standardized instructions and received a daily reminder by e-mail or by
 phone at the end of the day during that week. Participation was not
 remunerated. 
description: Of all of the participants, 36 youth did not fill out the
 self-report questionnaires during the home visit. These youths did not
 significantly differ from the current sample in terms of gender and age
 (all ps ≥ .789). Furthermore, 62 children did not fill out the daily diary
 because they found it too time-consuming. These youths did not
 significantly differ from the remaining sample on gender, age, NE, PE, and
 depressive symptoms at baseline (all ps ≥ .142). <br> Preliminary
 analyses of the cross-sectional data suggested that the percentage of
 missing data ranged between 0% and 1.4% per item. Comparison of means and
 covariances of all variables using Little's MCAR-test produced a
 normed χ² (χ²/df) of 1.05, p &gt; .30, indicating that the data were
 likely missing completely at random. Consequently, missing item values
 were imputed following the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm
 available in SPSS 23.<br> It is expected that in daily diary studies
 there will be missing data over the 7 days, as was the case in the current
 study. Participation across weekly assessment was acceptable. The average
 number of weekly assessments completed was 5.81 (SD = 1.85) out of a
 possible 7. In total, 59.4% (279) of participants completed all seven
 assessments, 14% (66) completed six assessments, 6.8% (32) completed five
 assessments, 4% (19) completed four assessments, 5.7% (27) completed three
 assessments, 4.3% (20) completed two assessments and 5.7 % (27) completed
 one assessment. In order to retain all available information, a specific
 time point was dropped from the analyses when one time-point was missing
 instead of dropping a participant from the entire analyses. Comparison of
 youth that completed all daily assessments of the diary study and youth
 who didn’t comply revealed that there were no significant differences
 between youth regarding gender, age, NE, PE, and depressive symptoms in
 the cross-sectional study, as well as daily levels of depressive symptoms
 in the daily diary study (all ps ≥ .253).<br>