The Role of Perceived Stress and Self-Efficacy in Young People’s Life Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Life satisfaction is an important indicator of successful development. However, adolescents' life satisfaction tends to be relatively unsteady, and environmental influences play a critical role in shaping life satisfaction among adolescents in the transition to young adulthood. Given the paramount importance that education plays in adolescents' lives, adolescents' life satisfaction may vary as a function of school-related stress experience. At the same time, coping resources may help reduce adverse effects of stress on life satisfaction. With this in mind, we examined whether, and to what extent, perceived stress in education and general self-efficacy (a resource that facilitates coping) affect the life satisfaction of adolescents in transition to young adulthood. We distinguished between baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy and within-person change in stress and self-efficacy to determine whether life satisfaction is sensitive to fluctuations in stress and self-efficacy when person-specific levels of stress and self-efficacy are taken into account. Estimating growth curve models on data from a panel study on the life trajectories of compulsory-school leavers (n = 5,126, 55.3% female), we found that baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy, as well as within-person change in stress and self-efficacy, affected adolescents' life satisfaction.Moreover, our results showed that baseline self-efficacy mitigated the negative effect of baseline stress on life satisfaction. These findings improve our understanding of two major psychological determinants of adolescents' life satisfaction and extend our knowledge of life satisfaction trajectories during the transition to young adulthood.

Perceived stress and self‐efficacy are associated with diabetes self‐management among adolescents with type 1 diabetes: A moderated mediation analysis

“…Self‐efficacy is also a key factor in attaining behavioural goals (Nc et al, ). With higher self‐efficacy, adolescents with T1D may be more confident about self‐management, their ability to successfully commit to plan and meet targeted goals (Burger & Samuel, ; Francis, ).…”

“…With higher self-efficacy, adolescents with T1D may be more confident about self-management, their ability to successfully commit to plan and meet targeted goals (Burger & Samuel, 2016;Francis, 2015).…”

Life satisfaction in association with self‐efficacy and stressor experience in adolescents – self‐efficacy as a potential moderator

“…Although research on the role of LS in relation to adolescent stress experience remains limited, along with major life events (2), minor chronic everyday stressors correlate negatively with LS (8,10,(12)(13)(14). In the school context, experience of high academic stress and negative interactions with teachers correlate with lower LS (9,12,13,15). Life satisfaction also correlates with several interpersonal factors in adolescents' lives, including the quality of parent and peer relationships (2,7,16).…”

“…Self-efficacy can thus be regarded as an important coping resource in the face of different stressors, that affects emotional and cognitive processes as well as choice of coping strategies (14,20,21,24); potentially this may reduce the negative impact of stress on health and wellbeing (23,25). In studies with adults and adolescents, self-efficacy has been shown to relate negatively with mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and perceived helplessness (25,26) and positively with quality of life (27,28) and LS (2,9,(29)(30)(31)(32). Moreover, when gender differences are found, males score higher than females do on self-efficacy (21,25,32).…”

Self-Regulation And Personality Characteristics Of Elementary School Children With School Life Satisfaction

“…It is shown that not only an effective achievement, but even a subjective perception of progress and a sense of movement in the right direction towards the goal, leads to increasing subjective well-being (Wiese, 2007). LS is also associated with such personal characteristics which characterize first of all the person's activity in achieving goals and overcoming difficulties: motivation for achievement, self-efficacy, stress resistance, self-control (Bandura, 1993;Burger, & Samuel, 2017;Hofmann et al 2014). With regard to learning activities, self-regulation is an important predictor of the education success (Zimmerman, 1990), which in turn allows to say that development of students' self-regulation can be a necessary condition for the children psychological well-being in school.…”