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

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.