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

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 a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2020-11, Vol.17 (21), p.8249
Main Authors: González-Carrasco, Mònica, Sáez, Marc, Casas, Ferran
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescents
Adults
Bayesian analysis
Blood pressure
Child
Child development
Children & youth
Cross-sectional studies
Data collection
Evolution
Female
Gender
Girls
Health Status
Heart rate
Humans
Longitudinal studies
Male
Personal Satisfaction
Psychological factors
Public policy
Quality of Life
Social Behavior
Socioeconomic Factors
Statistical models
Teenagers
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph17218249