How Do Social Support and Resilience Interact in Parents of Children with ASD? A Cross-Lagged Mediation and Moderation Analysis from the COR Perspective.
Teaching parents active coping skills can raise both their social support and resilience in just six months, especially for families with school-age children.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wang et al. (2025) asked parents of autistic children to fill out surveys twice, six months apart. They wanted to see if social support and resilience help each other grow over time.
The team used cross-lagged analysis. That means they checked if earlier support predicted later resilience, and if earlier resilience predicted later support.
What they found
Support and resilience boosted each other across the six months. The link was strongest for parents of school-age kids.
Active coping was the bridge. When parents used active coping, gains in support led to gains in resilience, and vice versa.
How this fits with other research
Feng et al. (2022) also found social support helps parents grow, but they looked at post-traumatic growth instead of resilience. Both studies show support is a key lever for parent well-being.
Hagopian et al. (2005) first mapped four coping styles these parents use. Lin’s team now shows one of those styles—active coping—is the engine that turns support into resilience over time.
Ang et al. (2019) seemed to disagree: they found active avoidance coping protects fathers from depression. The difference is role: avoidance acts as a short-term shield, while active coping builds long-term strength. Both can be true at different moments.
Why it matters
If you run parent training or support groups, teach active coping skills like problem-solving, scheduling breaks, and seeking information. For parents of school-age kids, this double benefit—more support and more resilience—may appear within months. You can measure both at baseline and again after one semester to see the change.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add one active-coping goal to the parent’s plan—like scheduling a weekly coffee with a friend—and track support and resilience with brief rating scales next session.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigates a longitudinal cross-lagged relationship between social support and resilience among parents of autistic children within the framework of conservation of resources theory. It also examines the mediating role of active coping and conducts a group comparison between preschool-aged and school-aged children within this relationship. In total, 436 parents of autistic children aged three to fifteen years from China participated in this study. They completed the Social Support Questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Coping Strategies Inventory at baseline (Time 1 [T1]) and 6 months later (Time 2 [T2]). A longitudinal cross-lagged structural equation modeling approach was applied. The findings indicated a longitudinal bidirectional relationship between social support and resilience over time, with active coping mediating this interaction. While the overall model did not significantly differ between parents of preschool- and school-aged children, the relationship between resilience at T1 and social support at T2 was significant for the school-aged group. The study highlights that social support and resilience mutually reinforce each other and that active coping serves as a key mechanism underlying this relationship. Considering the variation across age groups, this study offers implications for age-specific family services aimed at enhancing resilience and social support for parents of autistic children.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.2224/sbp.2007.35.1.19