Factors associated with externalized anger among early adolescents in rural Appalachia: A conceptual proposition with implications for violence prevention.

The data were cross-sectional, so they cannot show whether harsh parenting, low support, or unsafe neighborhoods came before anger or caused it. All information was self-reported by adolescents, so recall and social desirability bias could affect the results. The anger measure may have influenced the unexpected finding that girls reported higher externalized anger than boys; other anger measures might produce different gender differences. The analysis excluded 81 students who selected gender non-conforming or Other, so findings do not cover all gender identities. The sample was rural Appalachian adolescents, so the associations may not apply to urban or other populations.

The paper is listed as NIH extramural research support. The authors declared no known competing financial interests or personal relationships.

Do not read these associations as proof that harsh parenting causes anger or that reducing harsh parenting will reduce anger. The study used cross-sectional self-report data, so it cannot show temporal order or whether an intervention would work.