Thesis Defence: Pathways Through Poverty

Jacqueline Tams, supervised by Dr. Kalee De France and Dr. Jamie Piercy, will defend their thesis titled “Pathways Through Poverty: Exploring Stress, Attachment, and Emotion Regulation Difficulties in Adolescence” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology.

An abstract for Jacqueline Tams’ thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.

Abstract

Childhood poverty can have insidious impacts on mental health outcomes across the lifespan; however, the mechanisms that may confer or mitigate risk remain unclear. One pathway may involve heightened exposure to daily stress, which may contribute to emotion regulation (ER) difficulties, a potent transdiagnostic risk factor for reduced mental health outcomes. At the same time, attachment relationships with supportive parents and peers may serve as protective factors against the detrimental impacts of daily stress and promote more regulatory success. The present study addressed these gaps by examining the direct association between poverty and ER difficulties, as well as the mediating role of daily stress in this relationship. Additionally, the moderating roles of parental and peer attachment on the association between daily stress and ER difficulties were assessed, and their relative influences were compared. Participants were 249 adolescents (Mage = 15.39; 65.5% female, 30.1% male, 2.6% genderexpansive) recruited from across British Columbia who completed a 14-day experience-sampling study assessing naturalistic ER and daily stress. Poverty was indexed using an income-to-needs ratio (INR) that accounted for household income, family size, and geographic location. Linear regression analyses indicated that poverty was not significantly associated with ER difficulties (b = -0.74, p = .30). A mediation analysis indicated that daily stress did not mediate the association between poverty and ER difficulties (b = 0.40, 95% CI [-0.20, 1.12]). Moderation analyses revealed a significant interaction between daily stress and parental attachment (b = -4.94, p = .03), such that higher parental attachment was associated with increased ER success at low levels of stress, although this advantage deteriorated at high levels of stress. In contrast, the interaction between daily stress and peer attachment was not significant (b = 0.28, p = .92). Sensitivity analyses suggested variability in these effects across different demographic considerations. This study underscores the importance of conceptualizing poverty as a complex, context-dependent experience shaped by multiple processes and offers implications for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers.