Children ’s Life Satisfaction: Developmental Trajectories and Environmental and Personality Predictors

AbstractLife satisfaction is a key indicator of children ’s healthy development. Although the developmental changes of life satisfaction during adolescence have been investigated, the developmental trajectories of life satisfaction and related predictors during childhood remain unclear. Thus, the current study aimed to identify the developmental traject ories of life satisfaction covering the period from middle to late childhood as well as to examine the predictive roles of environmental factors (i.e., family dysfunction and basic psychological needs satisfaction at school), personality factors (i.e., neuroticism and extraversion), and their intera ctions in these developmental trajectories. An accelerated longitudinal design was used with Chinese elementary school students (N = 1069, 45.8% girls,Mage = 9.43,SD = 0.95) of 3 cohorts (grade 3, grade 4, and grade 5) on 4 occasions at 6-month intervals. Growth mixture modeling analyses revealed three distinct trajectories of life satisfaction: “High-Stable” (88.8%), “High-Decreasing” (6.8%), and “Low-Increasing” (4.4%). Multivariate logistic r egression analyses revealed that family dysfunction and neuroticism served as risk factors for adverse developmental trajectories of life satisfaction; whereas basic psychological needs satisfaction at school served as a protective factor. Furthermore, the interaction between family dysfunction and extraversion suggested that higher levels of extraversion buffered ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research