A matter of timing? Effects of parent-adolescent conflict on adolescent negative affect and depressive symptoms on six timescales

Development is an iterative dynamic process that unfolds over time. Few theories, however, discuss the speed of developmental processes. Therefore, decisions about measurement timing often rely on arbitrary or practical choices, disregarding the timescale dependency of the results. As an exemplary case, this preregistered study assessed reciprocal associations between parent-adolescent conflict and ill-being (i.e., negative affect and depressive symptoms) with daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, and three-monthly intervals. A 100-day diary study (N = 159, M = 13.31 years, 62% girls, 89% Dutch, data collection: 2020-2021) and a 26-wave biweekly study (N = 253, M = 14.37 years, 72% girls, 96% Dutch, data collection: 2019-2020) were used. By aggregating measurements, multiple timescales could be assessed within the same data set. Multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that conflict predicted depressive symptoms 1 month (beta = .09) and 3 months later (beta = .13). Reversely, negative affect predicted conflict 1 week later (beta = .07) and depressive symptoms predicted conflict 2 weeks later (beta = .08). Thus, transactional processes may function differently at different timescales, which has implications for expanding developmental theories about the timescales of relevant processes.