TY - JOUR TI - What’s important to me DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3GQ6W2M PY - 2014 AB - There is a growing body of research examining the relationship between expressive writing and psychological stress and well-being. The current study sought to explore whether aspects of elementary students’ writing about their personal values could predict if students were considered more at-risk or more resilient. This study used data from 176 5th grade students (Mean age = 10.95, 63.63% Female, 79.54% African American, 20.46% Hispanic) from a low-income, urban district in New Jersey who participated in a Laws of Life essay writing program as part of a larger school-based social-emotional learning intervention; these essays were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software, as well as qualitative coding by trained independent coders. Students and their teachers rated students on a number of dimensions of resiliency and risk before and after essay writing (i.e., self-concept, social skills, internalizing, externalizing and hyperactivity behaviors), which were then used to predict at-risk and resilient cluster groups using a Two-Step Cluster Analysis procedure. Discriminant Factor Analysis (DFA) results revealed that the percentage of LIWC-computed death-related words in the essays predicted at-risk group membership for Male students and Hispanic students. The percentage of social process related words in the essays was also a significant predictor for Hispanic students, with more social process words predicting membership in the more resilient group. These DFA results were replicated using post-intervention data, with two additions: the percentage of death-related words also predicted at-risk status for the African American subsample and family-related words predicted at-risk status for Male students. In addition, individuals who wrote about a stressful life event, about one third of students, were more likely to be in the at-risk group post-intervention. Overall, these results suggest that Laws of Life essay characteristics, particularly the percentage of death, social processes, and family-related words, can be predictive of at-risk or resiliency status in children from high-risk communities. Further, the implications of students spontaneously mentioning stressful life events when writing about their personal values and identity are discussed. KW - Psychology KW - Youth with social disabilities--New Jersey KW - Graphotherapy--New Jersey KW - City children--New Jersey KW - Children--Writing KW - Narration (Rhetoric) LA - eng ER -