Family Functioning and Adjustment in Appalachian Youth: Moderating Role of Extracurricular Participation

Supportive family relationships and parenting practices are linked to healthy adjustment in children and adolescents. We examined the concurrent associations between aspects of family functioning and measures of adjustment in an understudied sample of low-income rural Appalachian adolescents. Also examined was whether school-based extracurricular involvement moderated the associations between these variables. Participants were 367 adolescents from multiple high schools (grades 9–12) in an Appalachian region of rural East Tennessee. Self-report measures were used to assess family relationships, extracurricular activity, internalizing and externalizing problems, and health risk behaviors; truancy data was collected from academic records. As expected, family cohesion and moral-religiosity were associated with positive adjustment in youth, whereas family conflict was associated with worse adjustment. We also found that extracurricular involvement moderated the association between both moral-religiosity and cohesion and adolescent truancy; moral-religiosity and cohesion were negatively associated with truancy when adolescents were involved in extracurricular activity. In addition, the relation between family conflict and substance use was moderated by participation in extracurricular activity; family conflict was positively associated with substance use when adolescents were involved in extracurricular activity. Findings offer preliminary support for the notion that moral-religiosity may serve a particularly important protective role for low-income Appalachian youth. Further exploration is needed with regard to the varied impact of extracurricular involvement on youth adjustment in this sample.