A Longitudinal Study into the Interplay between Problem Orientation and Adolescent Well-Being is the article by Ciarrochi, Leeson, and Heaven, where the implications of researches concerning negative problem orientation and poor emotional well-being and possible intervention are concerned. The investigations presented in this article, have a close connection to the investigations, which have been made earlier in the same sphere and proved that negative problem orientation (also known as NPO) served as a predecessor to fear and even hostility among the young people of both genders.
However, the predecessor to NPO was not properly identified, this is why the investigations of Joseph Ciarrochi and his team should be regarded as useful and timely. The article under consideration is perfectly prepared: several chapters of the article present clear information upon the chosen issue, properly planned tables provide the reader with a chance to concentrate on the main issues, students of both genders are involved into researching, and, finally, at the end of the article, the authors pay enough attention to possible limitations of their investigation in order to encourage other researchers to improve the results.
The purpose of this article is to investigate what connection may be between the well-being of young people and negative problem orientation. Lots of previous researches offered an idea that adolescent well-being is disposed to be decreased among the people at the age of 16. This is why it is better to concentrate on 16-year-old boys and girls in order to help them overcome stresses and solve some problems. However, a concrete agreement as to the influence of negative problem orientation and its connection to poor well-being was not still identified. So, it is better to investigate how exactly problem orientation influences well-being or find out whether the former is only the consequent of the latter.
The researchers of the article choose NPO as the major object of their work. They find out that NPO takes place in case young people are characterized by “self-efficacy with respect to cognitive set” (Ciarrochi et al., 2009); so, their common decision was to investigate NPO from three different perspectives: cross-sectional, intervention, and longitudinal. Cross-sectional investigations demonstrate that NPO may lead to depression and even suicidal intentions; intervention research underlines the significance of problem-serving therapy; and longitudinal research shows that depression cannot predict future skill, but, on the contrary, it may serve as a consequence of quite low skill.
One more important factor is noticed during the research and properly described in the article; it is the significance of the NPO trajectory. Ciarrochi and his team admit the fact that the increase of negative problem orientation trajectory may lead to a quick worsening effect. This is why NPO should be regarded as a precursor of affecting state than its consequence. Such divergence in results may be explained by one simple truth – the effect sizes are still small within this and past researches.
This article and presented research may be called strong due to another fact: its writers are eager to mention the limitations of their investigation in order to promote further development of the case. The measurement of self-reports, time limitations, and year limitations have a certain impact on the results of the investigation. However, these results help to identify those adolescents, who may be at risk because of their emotional problems, offer possible problem-solving therapy, and provide these people with an opportunity to solve these problems independently and find the necessary balance somewhere inside.
Joseph Ciarrochi, Peter Leeson, and Patrick Heaven offer reliable research in their article A Longitudinal Study into the Interplay between Problem Orientation and Adolescent Well-Being. Their intentions to investigate negative problem orientation and its connection to poor emotional well-being have to be encouraged because the results will certainly help to comprehend more the actions of adolescents and find out the reasons for their poor progress in order to improve their skills in the future.
The chosen approach to evaluate the situation from different perspectives and the attention to the differences between positive problem orientation and negative problem orientation provide them with a possibility to achieve higher results in comparison to the results, made by their predecessors. In the beginning, the authors set one purpose for their investigation – to discover whether NPO serves as a precursor or a consequence of students’ affective states.
So, their hard work and numerous investigations among different students help to find out that NPO is still a precursor but not a consequence of well-being. This is why the students with high NPO get more chances for emotional down and fewer chances to train in problem orientation. In general, the results of the investigation meet the requirements of the project, and the authors’ abilities to represent their ideas in a proper way to make this research more interesting and informative for the readers. So, to my mind, the article under consideration is rather successful and has to be taken into consideration by all those people who want to learn the affective states among adolescents.
Reference List
Ciarrochi, J., Leeson, P., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2009). A Longitudinal Study into the Interplay between Problem Orientation and Adolescent Well-Being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56 (3): 441-449.