Subjective Well-Being of Primary and Secondary School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

This study employs a person-oriented approach to examine the heterogeneity of samples of primary school students ( N = 2,333; 56.5% girls) and secondary school students ( N = 2,329; 62.9% girls) in terms of levels of subjective well-being (SWB) in five domains: family, friends, school experience, body, and the local area. The study was conducted in Poland during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latent profile analysis revealed five profiles among primary school students and six profiles among secondary school students. The profiles identified among primary school students had their counterparts among secondary school students and included “highly satisfied,” “moderately satisfied,” “highly dissatisfied,” “satisfied with their family life and local area and dissatisfied with their friends,” and “satisfied with their family life and friends and dissatisfied with their local area” profiles. In both samples, the profile with high levels of satisfaction in all domains was the most numerous. Moreover, in secondary school students, we identified the sixth profile, which was highly satisfied with their friends and dissatisfied in other domains. We also noted that gender, age, type of school and positive relationships with others predicted the latent profile membership. The results of this study indicate the need to utilize the person-oriented approach to gain insight into various patterns of children’s SWB. Moreover, the study provides some practical recommendations for preparing tailored interventions aimed at improving children’s SWB. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12187-022-09952-2.

Children’s Subjective Well-Being During the Coronavirus Pandemic

“…There were also confronted with an abrupt decline in -when not an outright cessation-leisure and extracurricular activities. Furthermore, they were impacted by their carers' declining well-being (Gierczyk et al, 2022;Mantovani et al, 2021;Martiny et al, 2022).…”

“…Digital access and technologies were not the only aspects of children's daily lives which were transformed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies agree that the quality of family and friends relationships may have been disturbed during the pandemic and may have had a knockon effect on children's SWB (Borualogo & Casas, 2022;Cosma et al, 2021;Gierczyk et al, 2022). In addition, SWB is also determined by structural factors -including living conditions, age, gender (Borualogo & Casas, 2022;Engel de Abreu et al, 2021), or migration status (Pieh et al, 2022;Steinmayr et al, 2022)-as well as specific individual emotional and cognitive states (Engel de Abreu et al, 2021).…”

“…When analysing a child's SWB, one of the central features is the necessity of having a strong social network (Konu et al, 2002). Venkataramu et al (2020) have emphasised the importance of social connectedness, particularly with peers, in children coping with the coronavirus pandemic, whereas other studies (Cosma et al, 2021;Gierczyk et al, 2022;Magson et al, 2021) have stressed the importance of social connections, regardless of whether they involved friends or family, in supporting higher levels of well-being.…”

Understanding and Measuring Child Well-being in the Region of Attica, Greece: Round Five

“…The Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) of Canada is the most important tool on a global level (Guhn et al, 2012 ; Schonert-Reichl et al, 2011 , 2013 ). Additionally, other tools to measure the subjective (Michalos & Land, 2018 ; Michalos & Hatch, 2020 ; Sirgy, 2021 , pp.132–133; Voukelatou et al, 2021 ) well-being of children have been developed, with a strong focus on life satisfaction (Aymerich et al, 2021 ; Borualogo & Casas, 2021 ; Caqueo-Urízar et al, 2022 ; Casas et al, 2013 ; Casas & González-Carrasco, 2021 ; Dinisman et al, 2012 ; Gierczyk et al, 2022 ; Goldan et al, 2022 ; Gross-Manos & Bradshaw, 2022 ; Herd, 2022 ; Huebner & Furlong, 2016 ; Jiang et al, 2021 ; Leto et al, 2021 ; Llosada-Gistau et al, 2015 ; Montserrat et al, 2015a , b ; Moreira et al, 2021 , 2022 ; Rodriguez de la Vega, 2014 ; Savahl et al, 2017 , 2021 ; Schutz et al, 2022 ; Tonon & Mikkelsen, 2022 ; Viñas et al, 2019 ). Furthermore, there are various studies concerning the opposite of child well-being, such as, according to Leriou et al, ( 2021 , Sect.…”

“…Studies on the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the well-being of children have been conducted all over the world (Branquinho et al, 2022 ; Bravo-Sanzana et al, 2022 ; Chzhen et al, 2022 ; Gao et al, 2022 ; Gierczyk et al, 2022 ). However, the only diachronic study that researched the same in the region of Attica, Greece, have been conducted in the third round of an on-going research by Leriou et al ( 2022b ) as well as in the fourth round of the same aforesaid research by Leriou ( 2022 ).…”