Applied Research in Quality of Life

We examined the multiple mediating effects of the satisfaction of relatedness needs at school and self-esteem in the relation between prosocial behavior and subjective well-being (SWB) in school among elementary school students employing a four-wave longitudinal design with six-month time intervals. At the baseline assessment, 1058 Chinese elementary school students (575 males; Mage = 9.44) completed a multi-measure questionnaire. A total of 776 students participated in the study on all four occasions. Results of structural equation modeling showed that: (a) Prosocial behavior at Time 1 positively predicted SWB in school at Time 4. (b) The satisfaction of relatedness needs at school at Time 2 mediated the path from prosocial behavior at Time 1 to SWB in school at Time 4; the mediating effect of self-esteem at Time 3 between prosocial behavior at Time 1 and SWB in school at Time 4 was not significant. (c) Prosocial behavior at Time 1 showed indirect effects on SWB in school at Time 4 successively via the satisfaction of relatedness needs at school at Time 2 and self-esteem at Time 3. Limitations of the study and implication of the results were discussed.

Health has been measured using different indicators such as self-rated health, mental health, psychological wellbeing, depressive symptoms, limiting longstanding illness or mortality rates, among others. In this framework, this paper aims to create a Synthetic Health Indicator using the P2 distance method which offers an alternative to measure individuals’ health in the European Union covering different dimensions: physical health, mental health, psychosocial resources, capacity of health services and community health status. As a secondary aim, the paper also explores the existence of gender health inequalities in the 28 European Union countries. Results suggest that physical, mental and psychosocial dimensions of health are more correlated with the Synthetic Health Indicator and also point to the presence of a territorial pattern throughout Europe. Northern and southern European countries had better average levels of health than eastern European countries, which showed poorer levels of health. Moreover, gender health gaps were not generally statistically significant in countries with higher scores in the Synthetic Health Indicator, with some exceptions, namely Spain, Ireland and Finland, although for most of the countries analyzed the differences favored women. Once the outcomes have been explained, the findings suggest that the different health regimes, as well as the family and social policies implemented by various governments as tools to mitigate gender inequalities, play an essential role.

Despite the popularity of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) for use in research, this instrument has not yet been validated with adolescents of different intellectual ability levels and across different cultures. This study examined the psychometric properties and measurement equivalence of BMSLSS with a sample of 676 Chinese adolescents who are deemed ‘gifted’ and attending the Hong Kong Academy of Gifted Education, and 702 students with average achievement in mainstream high schools. Results indicated high internal consistency for the scale and a one-factor solution for BMSLSS with this population. Tests of configural, full metric and partial scalar invariance suggest that gifted students attending an academy conceptualize life satisfaction in a same way as their average attainment peers in regular schools. The findings support the applicability and measurement equivalence of BMSLSS for use with Chinese gifted and average-ability students.

The domain-of-life approach to subjective well-being (SWB) has been popular for decades. Recognizing the possibility that individuals may not perceive all life domains equally important, many researchers advocate for importance weighting, which is to incorporate the relative importance of life domains (i.e., domain importance) into the scoring of SWB at the individual level. However, the need for and the adequacy of importance weighting remain topics of debate. What has been missing in the debate is the consideration of influences of potential confounding factors. Given that age is significantly associated with domain satisfaction, domain importance, and SWB, assessing importance weighting should not ignore the potential confounding effect of age. Analyzing data from an online survey, we found that adjusting for the confounding effect of age produced negligible changes in the results of assessing the role that domain importance played in the relationship between domain satisfaction and SWB. Our findings support the observations from the literature that the results of assessing importance weighting depended on the SWB variable selected. However, given our non-probability study sample, future studies should continue to consider age as a confounder in assessing importance weighting in the domain-of-life approach to SWB.

Nghiên cứu này đã điều tra vai trò trung gian của sự căng thẳng bị cảm nhận trong mối quan hệ giữa trí tuệ cảm xúc và sự thoả mãn cuộc sống cũng như sức khoẻ tâm lý khi kiểm soát các đặc điểm tính cách. Mẫu nghiên cứu bao gồm 400 sinh viên tốt nghiệp (278 phụ nữ, 122 nam giới) từ Đại học Deusto với độ tuổi từ 22 đến 60. Dữ liệu về trí tuệ cảm xúc, sự căng thẳng bị cảm nhận, sự thoả mãn cuộc sống, sức khoẻ tâm lý và các thang đo đặc điểm tính cách được thu thập, và phương pháp bootstrap được sử dụng để khám phá các hiệu ứng trung gian đa dạng. Như mong đợi, trí tuệ cảm xúc có mối liên hệ tích cực với sự thoả mãn cuộc sống và sức khoẻ tâm lý. Mô hình cuối cùng cho thấy một con đường đáng kể từ trí tuệ cảm xúc qua sự căng thẳng bị cảm nhận đến sự thoả mãn cuộc sống và sức khoẻ tâm lý ngay cả khi kiểm soát các đặc điểm tính cách như các biến đồng. Các phát hiện của chúng tôi cho thấy một quá trình tiềm ẩn mà qua đó trí tuệ cảm xúc cao làm gia tăng sức khoẻ tâm lý ở các sinh viên tốt nghiệp bằng cách giảm thiểu trải nghiệm căng thẳng. Những hạn chế của kết quả và những ý nghĩa của các phát hiện này đối với nghiên cứu trong tương lai được bàn luận.

Over the past decades migration has increased dramatically. Most of the scientific literature on immigrant mental health has focussed on stress, distress and mental illness. Less attention has been paid to positive aspects in particular mental well-being. The existing studies among immigrants who move for economic, educational or personal reasons have not been systematically reviewed and analysed to provide an overview of the factors which may affect their subjective well-being. Further, we do not know the extent to which the existing integrative theory of well-being, the Theory of Sustainable Happiness (Lyobumirsky et al. in Review of General Psychology 9:111–131, 2005) derived from research on general population is substantiated by research conducted with immigrants. To address these gaps we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the determinants of well-being among international immigrants. Overall 11 studies met inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. The analyses revealed that social support and dispositional factors (e.g. optimism, self-esteem) are strongly related to well-being whilst circumstantial factors such as income or duration of migration have weak and nonsignificant relationship with it. The findings are consistent with the Theory of Sustainable Happiness (2005) which suggests that circumstantial factors account for much less variance of well-being than dispositional factors because people tend to adapt to their circumstances. The study highlights the critical role of social support and intrapersonal factors in promoting and sustaining well-being of immigrants.

For athletes facing high levels of pressure and experiencing significant psychological and physical demands, mere adaptation to the pressure is insufficient. They must also possess psychological resilience, which entails the ability to rebound from stressful conditions or even surpass their previous performance levels. Previous research has indicated that receiving unilateral positive support is one of the factors contributing to psychological resilience. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between athlete gratitude and psychological resilience. Gratitude is considered a relational, reciprocal, and prosocial construct that aligns well with the interdependence inherent in the sports context. This research focuses on both the environmental and individual levels of gratitude, drawing on the multilevel model of gratitude framework. The study investigates how the grateful climate, representing environmental gratitude, influences athletes’ psychological resilience through individual gratitude. A longitudinal survey method was employed, involving a total of 289 high school student-athletes from 49 teams who participated in a five-wave survey conducted over a three-year period. The results indicate a significant influence of the grateful climate on changes in athletes’ psychological resilience. This influence operates through individual gratitude, which acts as a mediating factor in predicting changes in psychological resilience. The findings of this study can provide practical guidance for human resource managers and educators by highlighting the importance of fostering gratitude at both the individual and environmental levels to enhance athletes’ psychological resilience.

Human psychology and behavior are influenced by culture. Self-construals reflect the individualism-collectivism dimension at the level of individual personality. The current study aimed to explore how self-construals affect subjective well-being (SWB) in China, which has a collectivist culture. Chinese undergraduates (N = 442) participated in this study. They responded to the self-construal scale, Rosenberg self-esteem scale, collective self-esteem scale and measures of SWB. The results suggested that the type of self-construal significantly predicted SWB. Moreover, an individual’s self-esteem completely mediated the impact of independent self-construal on SWB, whereas interdependent self-construal influenced SWB directly, as well as indirectly though collective self-esteem. In addition, collective self-esteem promoted individual self-esteem, which in turn further stimulated SWB. These findings extend prior reports and shed light on how individual differences in self-construal affect SWB.