Understanding emotional and behavioral difficulties and prosocial behavior through the prism of network analysis

The main objective of this work was to estimate the psychological network of emotional and behavioral difficulties and prosocial behavior during adolescence. A total of 386 students were selected incidentally from different school centers from La Rioja (Spain). The mean age was 14.28 years (SD = 0.57), with 52.1% of girls. For the evaluation of emotional and behavioral difficulties and prosocial behavior, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used. The estimated network of emotional and behavioral problems was strongly interconnected both intra-domain and inter-domain. The prosocial behavior was negatively related to the emotional and behavioral difficulties of teenagers. The nodes with greater centrality strength were items 13 (sadness) and 11 (frienship). In terms of expected influence, the most influential nodes were items 13 (sadness) and 19 (bullied). The results of the stability analysis indicated that the network was estimated with moderate precision. Emotional well-being and its related difficulties can be conceptualized as a dynamic complex system of cognitive, emotional and behavioral characteristics that interact causally with each other. The network model allows us to analyze and understand mental health problems and human behavior from a different perspective, opening new lines of research within the field of psychology.