PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) commonly experienced by custodial grandchildren, such as childhood
abuse and neglect, have been associated with poorer developmental outcomes, which may be a result of
disruptions in daily socio-emotional well-being, stressor exposure, and emotional reactivity. Links between
ACEs and stressor-emotion mechanisms are particularly relevant for custodial adolescent grandchildren, given
that there over two million households where grandmothers, without the present of parents, are caring for
them. As such, it is necessary to advance knowledge on the extent to which their daily life experiences are
negatively impacted, whether there are identifiable resilience factors that promote positive outcomes, and
develop low-cost, accessible programs that meet their socio-emotional needs. Daily diary studies, which are
based on collecting repeated measures from individuals across several days, have shown that stressor
exposure and emotional reactivity are associated with poorer well-being among adolescents. However, these
daily processes have not been examined specifically in custodial adolescent grandchildren, and the impact of
ACEs on these processes in adolescence is largely unknown. The role of socio-emotional skills as a resilience
factor in the context of daily stress and emotions has not been previously examined either. Moreover, despite
custodial adolescent grandchildren being severely at risk, there are few programs that have been shown to
improve their socio-emotional well-being. Given these limitations, the proposed study aims to provide new
insights into how day-to-day fluctuations in stressors are associated with changes in emotional well-being,
whether individual differences in ACEs or socio-emotional skills predict daily fluctuations in stressor-emotion
dynamics, and test an online program via a randomized trial with custodial adolescents. Aim 1 will determine
whether daily stressors are related to well-being outcomes: (A) on average and (B) in day-to-day analyses
indicative of within-person processes. Aim 2 will examine whether ACEs and socio-emotional skills predict
overall levels of daily well-being and exposure to daily stressors, and test whether each factor moderates daily
(i.e., within-person) associations between stressors and well-being outcomes. Aim 3 will test whether an online
social intelligence training intervention can improve adolescents' socio-emotional skills, daily well-being,
stressor exposure, and emotional reactivity, and if improvements differ across levels of ACEs. All analyses will
be conducted with dynamic structural equation modeling, a statistical tool at the frontiers of modeling intensive
longitudinal data. The findings of the proposed study have implications for understanding links between
childhood adversity, socio-emotional skills, and several aspects of daily life such as well-being, stressor
exposure, and emotional reactivity in adolescence. Furthermore, results may inform future prevention efforts
and provide evidence for a low-cost, accessible, and scalable online program that improves the socio-
emotional well-being of custodial adolescent grandchildren.
