how do adolescents define depression? - cIRcle - University of ...

CHAPTER IV: RESULTS
Chapter IV: Results
The results of this research are presented in four sections corresponding to the findings
related to this study's four questions. The first section begins with a presentation of participants'
conceptions of adolescent depression and frequencies at different phases of data reduction. The
second section follows with a presentation of the findings of the association of students'
conceptions of depression to grade, gender, depressive symptomatology, self-recognition of
depression, thinking about own need to talk to someone when depressed, and talking to someone
when feeling depressed. In the third section, I present the results of the association of self-
recognition of depression to depressive symptomatology, and to pathways to choosing to talk to
someone at the time of feeling depressed. The results of regression analyses examining the
relations of social perspective coordination, emotion awareness and expression of emotion, and
emotion regulation, to dimensions of adolescents' depressive symptomatology, are presented in
the final fourth section.
Categories and Subcategories of Adolescents' Conceptions of Depression and their
Frequencies
To address the first question in this study in which the students were asked to generate
their own definitions or conceptions of adolescent depression, frequency counts of participants'
generated definitions of depression were summed across the categories and subcategories. In the
initial part of this section, participants' total frequencies of response units, the sum of identified
COAD units, students' range of COAD units, and means of COAD units (for unit definition and
its operationalization, see Coding Schemes section in Methodology Chapter), are presented.
Next, I report the frequency counts and percentages of students' COAD units of all their
definitions of adolescent depression for each category and subcategory. Following is a discussion
of the process of deriving definition units of adolescent depression to determine the presence of a
COAD unit in a category or subcategory generated by each respondent. The final part of this
section ends with a presentation of the data reduction strategies employed.
81