Well-being in late childhood and early adolescence: evolution and explanatory factors

Abstract

This paper has three objectives: (1) to test whether a decrease in well-being scores is observed from one year to the next in the period between 10 and 16 years of age when measured using indicators of subjective well-being (SWB) (including the OLS as a global measure) and psychological well-being (PWB); (2) to explore the contribution of the primary/secondary school, gender and age in explaining global SWB; and (3) to identify potential non-linear relationships between SWB, measured globally, and other indicators of SWB and PWB. To this end, data were analysed from 994 Spanish students, who responded to the same self-administered questionnaire over two consecutive school years and were recruited through a process of non-random sampling. The results obtained using Student’s t-test for repeated measures and generalized additive models (GAM) showed a statistically significant decrease in 10 out of the 20 indicators considered (more of which assess PWB than SWB), and that the indicators measuring the SWB affective component made a more relevant and less linear contribution to a global SWB measure than those measuring the cognitive component or the PWB