Findings from the First Wave of the ISCWeB Project: International Perspectives on Child Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

Subjective well-being (SWB) -here understood as a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of his/her life as whole and with regard to particular aspects of his/her life (Rees et al. 2010) -is an important concept. Its relevance arises for a number of reasons, including its important role in understanding variations in the well-being of populations and in identifying what aspects and factors are most salient in people's lives. As such, SWB has received growing attention, both from academia and the political world.Most SWB studies have, however, focused on adults' SWB, whereas interest in children's SWB is quite recent (Casas 2011; Ben-Arieh 2012). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child's acknowledgment of the importance of taking into account children's views in matters that affect their lives heavily contributed to this recent trend.Current studies on the SWB of children have produced evidence on how children's life satisfaction seems to be important to their positive development, but also in identifying possible risks and vulnerabilities (Rees et al. 2010). Moreover, children's SWB can act as an important buffer against negative outcomes. On the other hand, studies focusing on what may affect children's SWB have suggested that children's happiness may be influenced by factors such as housing, safety, bullying, school achievements or social interactions (Bradshaw et al. 2013). However, much is still to be learned about these relationships and deeper research is necessary in order to grasp a Child Ind Res (2015) 8:1-4

Multilevel Analysis of Child and Adolescent Subjective Well‐Being Across 14 Countries: Child‐ and Country‐Level Predictors

“…Data from the Children's Worlds Study (Wave 1) were used to test a multilevel model predicting child life satisfaction and self‐image from individual (age, gender), microsystem factors (home context, family relationships, peer relationships, school context, teacher relationships, and neighborhood quality), and country‐level macrosystem factors (GDP and GINI coefficient). It was designed to overcome several deficits in the existing literature, including measurement of (a) objective and adult‐centered perspectives rather than child perspectives (Ben‐Arieh, ; Dinisman et al., ; Estola et al., ; Lee & Yoo, ; Lawler, Newland, Giger, & Roh, ), (b) negative rather than positive indicators (Amerijckx & Humblet, ), (c) a narrow number of populations and countries (Cho, ; Estola et al., ; Govender et al., ; Jordan & Graham, ; Manzoor et al., ), and (d) limited aspects of a child's ecological systems (Amerijckx & Humblet, ; Estola et al., ). This study contributes to the research literature by measuring children's SWB relative to individual, microsystem, and macrosystem factors with international samples that provide greater age variation and geographic representation than previous studies (Estola et al., ; Kim & Main, ; Lee & Yoo, ).…”

“…First, the earlier studies of well‐being focused on objective (adult perspective) as opposed to subjective (child perspective) measures (Estola, Farquhar, & Puroila, ; Lee & Yoo, ). Discrepancies in adult and child perspectives suggest that children's views should be examined (Ben‐Arieh, ; Dinisman, Fernandes, & Main, ; Estola et al., ; Lawler, Newland, Giger, & Roh, ). Second, many studies have examined negative indicators of well‐being, as opposed to positive indicators (Amerijckx & Humblet, ).…”

“…The Children's Worlds: International Survey of Children's Well‐Being (ISCWeB) was designed to address these gaps in research by using valid and comparable psychometric scales with the largest known international database on children's SWB (Casas, this volume; Casas & Rees, ; Dinisman & Ben‐Arieh, ; Rees & Main, ). It takes a child‐centered approach in examining positive aspects of children's environments and well‐being across a wide range of samples worldwide (Dinisman & Ben‐Arieh, ; Dinisman et al., ; Rees & Main, ). One of the strengths of the study is the measurement of important contextual influences on children, including home, peer, neighborhood, and school influences (Lawler, Newland, Giger, & Roh, ; Lawler, Newland, Giger, Roh, & Brockevelt, ; Newland, Giger, Lawler, Carr, Dykstra, & Roh, ; Newland, Lawler, Giger, Roh, & Carr, ; Lee & Yoo, ; Rees & Main, ).…”

Eastern and Western Children’s Voices on their Well-Being

“…Although several studies on children (e.g., Bradshaw et al 2007) have added the aspect of SWB to their indices, the International Survey of Children's Well-Being (ISCWeB) (http://www.isciweb.org) is a unique research project. It is a world-wide survey of child SWB that is based solely on the children's own evaluations, perceptions, and aspirations in different life domains (Dinisman et al 2015).…”

Is having a family member with chronic health concerns bad for young people's health? Cross-sectional evidence from a national survey of young Australians

“…Family cohesion : Family cohesion was measured using a family cohesion scale from the international Children ’ s Worlds survey which aims to measure belonging and emotional bonding young people feel within their family 43. Students were asked: “how often in the past week have you spent time doing the following things with your family?” Students rated the frequency of “talking together,” “laughing together” and “learning together” from (0) “not at all last week” to (3) “every day last week.” Students could also code (4) “Don't know.” These three items loaded onto a family cohesion scale (α=0.74; factor loadings=0.72–0.92, p<0.001), the structure of which was invariant across respondents with and without an FHC (χ 2 (df=8 N=4534)=32.48, p<0.001; CFI=0.997; RMSEA=0.037).…”