Psychosocial factors influencing individual well-being in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong : a six-year longitudinal study

Abstract

This pioneer study investigated the longitudinal development of adolescent subjective well-being (SWB) in terms of life satisfaction and hopelessness. The concurrent and longitudinal influence of different socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, economic disadvantage, and family intactness), individual qualities (i.e., resilience, social competence, positive identity, and spirituality), and familial characteristics (i.e., family functioning, and parent-child relationship) on these two aspects of SWB were examined. A total of 3328 Hong Kong students from 28 secondary schools participated in a 6-year longitudinal study. While adolescent life satisfaction showed a declining trend, hopelessness gradually increased across the six years. Resilience, social competence, family functioning, and father-child relational qualities were significant predictors of life satisfaction at the initial status, whereas gender, mother-child relational qualities, positive identity and spirituality predicted changes in life satisfaction over time. Regarding hopelessness, gender, family intactness, resilience, social competence, father-child relational qualities, and mother-child relational qualities were significant correlates at the initial slope, but spirituality and family functioning were the longitudinal predictors of hopelessness over the adolescence period. While the present study showed that some existing Western findings can be replicated in the Chinese context, there are some novel and puzzling observations deserving further scrutiny.