The Relationship between Depression and Social Interaction Frequency

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between depression and social interaction frequency. Addressing the limitations of prior research that relied on cross-sectional data and retrospective assessments—which are prone to recall bias and fail to elucidate predictive relationships—we innovatively adopted a diary-based approach to examine the temporal dynamics of depression and social interaction frequency among university freshmen. Data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.0 to construct cross-day predictive models, thereby enhancing the reliability and ecological validity of the findings. As illustrated in Figure , γ₁ⱼ and γ₄ⱼ represent autoregressive effects, while γ₂ⱼ and γ₃ⱼ denote cross-lagged effects. The intercepts for depression and social interaction frequency are denoted as μ_depression and μ_social interaction frequency, respectively. Both intercepts and slopes were modeled as random effects in the analysis