Transactional, social causation, or symptoms-driven? Disentangling the longitudinal associations between perceived family, peer, and teacher support and depressive symptoms among multicultural adolescents

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Abstract
This study examines whether perceived social support from family, peers, and teachers exhibits reciprocal relations with depressive symptoms (transactional model), acts as a protective factor (social causation model), or emerges as a consequence of depressive symptoms (symptoms-driven model) among South Korean multicultural adolescents. A four-wave longitudinal dataset from a nationally representative cohort ( N = 1,500; 50.67% female; M age = 10.98 years, SD = 0.37) was analyzed using random intercept cross-lagged panel models. At the between-person level, all three perceived support sources were negatively associated with depressive symptoms across both the joint and bivariate models ( rs = −0.69 to −0.63, ps < .001). At the within-person level, perceived family support predicted subsequent decreases in depressive symptoms in both modeling frameworks ( βs = −0.07 to −0.05, ps < .05), and perceived peer support similarly emerged as a significant prospective predictor when modeled independently ( βs = −0.07 to −0.06, ps < .05). Depressive symptoms did not predict changes in any perceived support source in either framework. The findings support a source-specific social causation model, with perceived family support emerging as the primary within-person protective factor, and highlight the family system as a pivotal intervention target for alleviating depressive symptoms in this vulnerable population.

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