Depressed Affect in Early Adolescence: An Examination of the Role of Gender, Co-Rumination, and Excessive Reassurance Seeking

TL;DRAbstract

Coyne’s (1976) Interpersonal Theory of Depression highlighted the idea that mildly dysphoric individuals exhibit behaviours which further increase their risk of becoming depressed. Keeping Coyne’s framework in mind, the three studies presented in this dissertation were designed to better understand the role of co-rumination and excessive reassurance seeking in the development of gender differences in depressed affect which are observed starting in adolescence (Wichstrom, 1999). These studies were done with a sample of 270 early adolescents who were assessed at five time points across a school year, although data from only the last two time points were used for this particular project. The goal of the first study was to examine the validity and reliability of newly developed peer-nomination items for the measurement of excessive reassurance seeking and co-rumination, to be used in the other two studies. While the two measures were found to be highly related, model fit indices were signi

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