Cumulative and compensatory effects of competence and incompetence on depressive symptoms in children

The authors tested 5 hypotheses from a competency-based model of child depression using classification and regression tree analysis. The authors obtained measures of 5 domains of competency (i.e., academic competence, social acceptance, sports competence, physical attractiveness, and behavioral conduct) and depressive symptoms that were derived from parent, teacher, peer, and self-reports on 1,063 3rd- and 6th-grade children. Results suggested that (a) multiple domains of competence related to depressive symptoms, (b) significant others' positive evaluations in multiple domains have a cumulative inverse relation to depressive symptoms, (c) negative evaluations in multiple domains have a cumulative but positive relation to depressive symptoms, (d) positive evaluations in one domain somewhat compensate for negative evaluations in another domain, and (e) negative evaluations in one domain offset positive evaluations in another domain.