Bullied Adolescent’s Life Satisfaction: Personal Competencies and School Climate as Protective Factors

Abstract

Although adolescence has been defined as a stage of vulnerability, due to the biopsychosocial changes that happen throughout this developmental stage, it is also one of growth. Some of the core personal competencies that have been identified to promote positive development at this stage while simultaneously preventing risks are: (1) a positive sense of self, (2) self-regulation, (3) decision-making skills, (4) a moral system of belief, and (5) prosocial connectedness. There are many factors and contexts that influence adolescent development. The school climate, for example, has the capacity to promote positive development and life satisfaction, yet on the other hand, it is a context within which different forms of violence, such as bullying, can occur. The principal aim of this study, therefore, is to analyze the influence that bullying has on one’s life satisfaction, while taking into account participants’ socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., gender and developmental stage), their core personal competencies (i.e., problem solving strategies, empathy, emotional repair, self-esteem, and values), and the school climate. To obtain data, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted with a sample of 647 Spanish students (53.3% female), ranging in age from preadolescence (10–13 years old; 60.3%) to mid-adolescence (14–18 years old; 39.7%), and belonging to diverse socio-economic contexts (15.3% rural) and schools (32.1% public). After gaining informed consent from both the participants and their parents, students completed the survey voluntarily, and under anonymity. Initially results show that gender, developmental stage, and having been bullied were predictors of participants’ levels of life satisfaction. When the core personal competencies were also considered in data analysis process, self-esteem, emotional repair, and social values were those demonstrating significant effects on one’s life satisfaction; moreover, being bullied was a significant predictor too. Finally, after taking school climate into account, only this variable as well as self-esteem and emotional repair were significant predictors of life satisfaction: the other assessed variables were no longer found to be significant predictors (i.e., gender, developmental stage, being bullied, and social values). These results have important implications for education objectives, methodologies, and school functioning: school climate, self-esteem and emotional repair seem to be particularly important for promoting student life satisfaction and for preventing the negative consequences associated with being bullied.

Predictive Effect of Positive Youth Development Attributes on Delinquency Among Adolescents in Mainland China

“…satisfaction (Lázaro-Visa et al, 2019;Ramos-Díaz et al, 2019) and life satisfaction negatively predict delinquency (Jung and Choi, 2017;Hanniball et al, 2018). In the separate regression analysis, all related PYD attributes also showed significant direct predictions on delinquency.…”

“…The above theoretical notions have been supported by rich empirical findings showing positive predictions of PYD attributes on adolescent life satisfaction (Zhang, 2016;Lázaro-Visa et al, 2019;Ma, 2020) and negative predictions of life satisfaction on adolescent delinquency (Jung and Choi, 2017;Hanniball et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2020). A handful of pioneering studies have empirically tested the mediational role of life satisfaction in linking PYD attributes to behavioral problems (Sun andShek, 2010, 2012).…”

“…In particular, life satisfaction, which refers to one's cognitive evaluation of his or her overall life quality (Diener et al, 1985), may serve as a mediator in linking PYD attributes and delinquent behavior among adolescents. Theoretically, the development of positive psychosocial competence enables adolescents to well adapt to biological, psychological, and social changes occurring in adolescence (Larson, 2011). With the healthy adjustment, adolescents are more likely to live a healthy lifestyle, maintain health and fitness, gain support and build positive connections, all of which make adolescents positively appraise their life (Shek et al, 2019a;Ma, 2020).…”

The Importance of Positive Youth Development Attributes to Life Satisfaction and Hopelessness in Mainland Chinese Adolescents

“…The first strategy was to perform hierarchical multiple regression analyses based on ordinary least square (OLS) approach to examine the prediction of a PYD variable (e.g., positive identity composite scores) on an outcome (e.g., life satisfaction), with the predictors entered in blocks (e.g., control variables in Block 1 and Wave 1 PYD variable in Block 2). In the literature on longitudinal studies, researchers have commonly used this approach ( Steinberg et al, 1989 ; Davis et al, 2019 ; Lázaro-Visa et al, 2019 ). We used SPSS 25.0 to conduct the multiple regression analyses as well as attrition and reliability analyses.…”

School Well-Being and Drug Use in Adolescence

“…Therefore, low self-esteem facilitates implication in criminal conducts or other risk conducts such as consumption and would highlight the importance of other variables, such as the family, academic, and social context. Thus, Christens and Peterson (2012) found that greater social support in the family, among peers, and also in the academic environment increases not only self-esteem but also the protective factors for violent conducts (Lázaro-Visa et al, 2019) and substance consumption (Malonda et al, 2019).…”