Conjunctive moderator variables in vulnerability and resiliency research: life stress, social support and coping skills, and adolescent sport injuries.

In life event research relating to vulnerability and resilience factors, single moderator variables have typically been the focus of study. Little is known about the ways in which moderator variables may interact with one another to increase vulnerability or resilience. We propose a distinction between conjunctive moderation, in which multiple moderators must co-occur in a specific combination or pattern to maximize a relation between a predictor and an outcome variable, and disjunctive moderation, in which any one of a number of moderators maximizes the predictor-criterion relation. Our results indicate that social support and psychological coping skills are statistically independent psychosocial resources and that they operate in a conjunctive manner to influence the relation between life stress and subsequent athletic injury in adolescents. Only athletes low in both coping skills and social support exhibited a significant stress-injury relation, and in that vulnerable subgroup, negative major life events accounted for up to 30% of the injury variance. Methodological considerations in the assessment of conjunctive moderator effects are discussed.