How self-regulation influences academic achievement and positive youth development: the mediating role of internalizing and externalizing symptoms

ABSTRACTYouths’ development can be positively or negatively impacted by various factors in their internal and external environment. This study investigated the interactive effects of self-regulation and internalizing and externalizing problems on academic achievement (reading and maths) and positive youth development (PYD) across one year. Data were obtained from 390 Icelandic youths (44.75% male) at two time points, in grades 6 (Mage = 11.71) and 7 (Mage = 12.70). Structural equation modelling indicated that self-regulation positively predicted all outcome measures one year later, whereas internalizing and externalizing symptoms negatively predicted PYD and maths. The findings further revealed that internalizing symptoms mediated the effects of self-regulation on maths performance, while externalizing symptoms mediated the effects of self-regulation on PYD. These results suggest that self-regulation not only predicts academic achievement and PYD directly, but may also influence these outcomes indirectly by decreasing internalizing and externalizing symptoms.KEYWORDS: Academic achievementpositive youth developmentself-regulationrisk factorsyouth AcknowledgmentsWe would like to express our gratitude to all teachers that helped in data collection and the youths who kindly completed the self-report questionnaires.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Authors’ contributionsAll authors contributed to the study conception. Material preparation and data collection were performed by SG and FB. RBG and BGGJ designed the analysis and interpreted the results. The first manuscript draft was provided by RBG. All authors were involved in reviewing and revising the previous manuscripts critically, as well as finalizing and approving the final manuscript.Data availability statementUnfortunately, the permissions granted from parents at the beginning of the study, do not permit us to grant access to the data outside of the research group.Ethics approvalThe study was approved by the National bioethics Committee in Iceland (ref. no. 14–166).Availability of data and materialNo data are available. RBG holds the data used in this study. The data are anonymized, but could hold identifiable details, thus, we are not allowed to share the data.Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2023.2267227Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by a research grant no: 141483-051 from The Icelandic Research fund (RANNÍS) to Steinunn Gestsdottir and Freyja Birgisdottir.