School-specific and Overall Well-being of Students: A Longitudinal Study

Author(s):

Barbara StiglbauerManuela Gamsjaeger

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

SES F 06, Paper Session

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-24

09:00-10:30

Room:

Sali 210 (NW 21), Aurora

Chair:

Janne Varjo

Contribution

The concept of well-being is steadily attracting attention both in everyday life and research. The feeling of well-being is important - nobody or only few people would cast doubt on it. However, overall well-being is hard to explain; rather an area-specific definition is indicated. For adolescents school is - in addition to family, friends, and leisure time - a vital part of their lives, thus a considerable source of their sense of well-being (Hascher, 2004). Furthermore positive emotions in school are significant for school quality and for success in school (see Hascher, 2004).

The literature on subjective well-being has progressed rapidly over the last decades, there´s little research on adolescent well-being and school-specific well-being though. For this reason the primary objective of our study conducted is to relate overall well-being and school-specific well-being of adolescents. We aim to clarify how closely well-being at school is linked to overall well-being and whether any causal relations can be identified.

Well-being at school is not to be taken for granted, as the few studies conducted on this topic show. Moreover school-specific well-being tends to decrease over school years (cf. Eder, 1995). The question how well-being is developing within one school year has not yet been addressed. Therefore the second aim of our proposal is to collect long-term data on school-specific and overall well-being to explore their development within one school year.

Literature on well-being identifies situational (e.g. sociodemographics, social contacts) and person-specific conditions (e.g. personality) as sources, factors of influence or moderator variables (cf. Becker, 1994; Diener, 1984). Hence, our third research question deals with the importance of situational and person-specific conditions of well-being at school and overall adolescent well-being, respectively.

Method

Sample: Data is collected in five waves within one school year. The respondents are students in secondary education, drawn from an Austrian youth online-survey-panel (www.opinioncorner.at). Panelists are invited via email to fill in the online questionnaire by choice and to attend a raffle at the end of the study. Measures: Due to the characteristics of the study design (repeated surveys, student-sample) questionnaires have to be short to prevent high drop-out-rates. Therefore overall well-being is measured with the WHO-five Well-being Index (WHO, 1998), which is a short and widely used instrument developed by the World Health Organization. School-specific well-being is assessed by means of a 14-item-questionnaire of Eder (1995, 2007) also used in the national additional survey of PISA 2009. The German 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory (Rammstedt, & John, 2007) was used to very briefly assess personality traits.

Expected Outcomes

The first wave was conducted in November 2009. After data clearing the final sample consisted of 159 students. Regarding our first research question there was a medium to high correlation of above r = .50 between overall and school-specific well-being. Higher scores on overall well-being as well as school-specific well-being was associated with higher scores on the personality dimensions extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. There were not any significant differences concerning gender and age either in school-specific or in overall well-being. The second wave of the survey was administered in January after Christmas holidays. The third - fifth wave will be conducted during summer term.

References

Becker, P. (1994). Theoretische Grundlagen. In A. Abele & P. Becker (Hrsg.), Wohlbefinden (S. 13-49). Weinheim: Juventa. Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 542-575. Eder, F. (Hrsg.) (1995). Das Befinden von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Schule. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag. Eder, F. (2007). Das Befinden von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der oesterreichischen Schule. Befragung 2005. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag. Hascher, T. (2004). Wohlbefinden in der Schule. Muenster: Waxmann. Rammstedt, B., & John, O. P. (2007). Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 203-212. World Health Organization (1998). World Health Organization info package: Matering depression in primary care. Frederiksborg: World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe, Psychiatric Research Unit.

Author Information

Barbara Stiglbauer

Johannes Kepler University of Linz

Linz

Manuela Gamsjaeger

Johannes Kepler University Linz

Department of Education and Psychology

Linz

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