A Longitudinal Research on Relationship Between Neuroticism and Depression of First-year College Students: Addictive Use of Social Networks as a Mediator and Psychological Resilience as a Moderator
First-year college students face transition from adolescence to early adulthood and the transformation of living environment, learning style and social role brings them a new challenge which has an important impact on their successful adaption to college life and completion of studies. Therefore first-year college students' adaptation problems and related mental health have attracted researchers' attention. The current research focuses on the depression of first-year college students and aims to explore the relationship between the neuroticism trait and depression, the mediating effect of addictive use of social networks and the moderating effect of psychological resilience. A moderated mediation model is hypothesized aiming to provide insights into how (the mediation role of addictive use of social networks), and under what conditions (the moderator role of psychological resilience), neuroticism leads to higher depression with the purpose of helping to understand the psychological problems of first-year college students in the adaptation period and providing reference for improving their mental health level. Three-wave longitudinal data from 1128 first-year students at a university were collected within three months of their enrollment. The scales involved include the ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), the 10-item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale, the Psycho-Social Aspects of Facebook Use (PSAFU) and the Depression Scale (PHQ-9). PROCESS macro for SPSS with bootstrapping was used to test the model. The results showed that (1) the prevalence of moderate to severe severity of depression in first-year students was 10.28% (T1) and 11.17% (T3). (2) Neuroticism is positively correlated with depression and addictive use of social networks; Addictive use of social networks is positively correlated with depression and neuroticism; Psychological resilience is negatively correlated with neuroticism, addictive use of social networks and depression. (3) neuroticism can significantly predict depression. Addictive use of social networks is a significant predictor of depression. (4) The moderating effect of medium and high levels psychological resilience on the relationship between neuroticism and addictive use of social networks is significant. Based on the above results, it can be concluded that addictive use of social networks has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between neuroticism and depression, and psychological resilience has a significant moderating effect in this process, which indicates that the moderated mediation model is valid.
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