Subjective Well-Being in Early Adolescence: Observations from a Five-Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This article aims to redress the lack of longitudinal studies on adolescents’ subjective well-being (SWB) and highlight the relevance of knowledge deriving from such research in designing public policies for improving their health and wellbeing in accordance with the stage of development they are in. To achieve this, the evolution of SWB during early adolescence (in adolescents aged between 10 and 14 in the first data collection) was explored over a five year period, considering boys and girls together and separately. This involved comparing different SWB scales and contrasting results when considering the year of data collection versus the cohort (year of birth) participants belonged to. The methodology comprised a generalized linear mixed model using the INLA (Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation) estimation within a Bayesian framework. Results support the existence of a decreasing-with-age trend, which has been previously intuited in cross-sectional studies and observed in only a few longitudinal studies and contrasts with the increasing-with-age tendency observed in late adolescence. This decrease is also found to be more pronounced for girls, with relevant differences found between instruments. The decreasing-with-age trend observed when the year of data collection is taken into account is also observed when considering the cohort, but the latter provides additional information. The results obtained suggest that there is a need to continue studying the evolution of SWB in early adolescence with samples from other cultures; this, in turn, will make it possible to establish the extent to which the observed decreasing-with-age trend among early adolescents is influenced by cultural factors.

The Evolution of Life Satisfaction Throughout Childhood and Adolescence: Differences in Young People’s Evaluations According to Age and Gender

“…Girls displayed higher life satisfaction than boys in childhood, whereas the opposite was true in adolescence. These results are consistent with longitudinal studies that have analysed gender correlations with LS or SWB in pre-adolescence and adolescence, showing that as age increases, SWB decreases, and at a much faster rate among girls (González-Carrasco et al, 2020), while negative affect (that most related to depression and other mental health problems) also increases more rapidly among girls .…”

“…The results showed that trends in PA and NA differ by gender, with a more pronounced decrease in PA and a more pronounced increase in NA among girls. The results of the data analysis by González-Carrasco et al (2020) also revealed the decrease in scores for the OLS and a domain-based SWB measure to be more pronounced among girls than boys. Other authors have also pointed out this possibility, including Lawton et al (1993), Weinstein et al (2007) and Martin-Krumm et al (2018), and further research from more contexts and countries is therefore required in this area.…”

“…However, little is known about life satisfaction during the infant developmental stage, which comprises 6-to 12-year-olds, and especially that of children aged 6 to 10. This therefore constitutes an unstudied and unknown period that requires further research (González-Carrasco et al, 2020). The same cannot be said of research in the adolescent stage.…”

On the Rocky Road to Independence: Big Five Personality Traits and Locus of Control in Polish Primary School Students during Transition into Early Adolescence

“…Conscientiousness, which involves the ability to work hard and continue one’s efforts with patience, has been demonstrated to play an important role in the successful completion of compulsory education [ 125 , 126 ]. School is one of the basic areas of activity of young people, which is why educational successes and failures influence their quality of life [ 127 , 128 , 129 ]. The more conscientious a person is, the more likely they are to achieve success and then reap the benefits associated with it, such as maintaining positive affect, receiving social gratification (praise) from teachers or parents, etc.…”

Cross-national and longitudinal evidence for a rapid decline in life satisfaction in adolescence

“…A declining-with-age trend is perhaps the dominant finding in the literature, and has been reported in early cross-sectional studies from Israel (Ullman & Tatar, 2001), South Korea (Park et al, 2005), Romania and Spain (Casas et al, 2013) and Germany (Goldbeck et al, Pg. 6 2007) and more recent longitudinal studies from Spain (Aymerich et al, 2021;González-Carrasco et al, 2017;González-Carrasco, Sáez, & Casas, 2020), Hong Kong (Shek & Liang, 2018), and Algeria (Tiliouine, Rees, & Mokaddem, 2019). However, a cross-sectional study in the US did not find a change in life satisfaction across grades 9-12 (Huebner et al, 2004).…”