Introduction: Emotional regulation strategies (ERSs) are essential for adolescent mental health and behavioral performance. Family and school contextual factors (e.g., parental monitoring and teacher-student rapport) play pivotal roles in shaping the development of adaptive or maladaptive ERSs, particularly during the transition from middle to high school. Yet, it remains uncertain which specific contextual factors confer risk or protection during this period, warranting further investigation.
Purpose: This study aimed to examine family and school contextual factors alongside two prototypical ERSs—reappraisal (ER) and suppression (ES)—to identify the most critical direct and synergistic predictors of ERSs use during this transition.
Methods: Two waves of longitudinal data from 5,558 U.S. adolescents (Mage = 13.62, SD = 0.48; 51.69% male) across Grades 8 and 9 were analyzed using network analysis (cross-sectional and cross-lagged panel networks) to estimate conditional independence associations among contextual factors and ERSs.
Results: In the cross‐sectional networks, the strongest contextual-ERS link in Grade 8 was between family conflict and suppression (rES = 0.096), whereas parental monitoring of adolescents' daily plans and suppression formed the strongest link in Grade 9 (rES = -0.125). In the longitudinal network predicting Grade 9 from Grade 8, school-contextual factors exhibited the most pronounced lagged effects: the greatest facilitator of reappraisal was school fondness (βER = 0.106), while the most detractor was deprioritization of grades (βER = -0.175); the strongest exacerbator of suppression was school boredom (βES = 0.100), and its most effective buffer was teacher rapport (βES = -0.111).
Conclusion: Family factors dominate the concurrent associations of ERSs, whereas school contexts exert stronger longitudinal effects. This study highlights critical, actionable intervention targets—strengthening teacher-student rapport, alleviating school boredom to reduce detrimental ERS (suppression), and fostering school fondness and prioritizing grades to bolster constructive ERS (reappraisal) during the middle-to-high school transition.