Longitudinal Study of School-Related Subjective Well-Being among Primary School Students

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study on the dynamics of subjective well-being among primary school students. Well-being is considered as a complex construct encompassing satisfaction with school, feelings about school, cooperation and/or hostile relations with peers as well as subjective physical well-being. The authors use the data of two evaluations of the tracking study conducted among the same third-grade and fourth-grade students (N = 865) who go to school in million-plus cities. The study shows that the level of subjective well-being decreases on all subscales among students aged nine to ten years, excepting the “relationship with peers” subscale and physical well-being. Gender differences were also detected: boys are less likely to be satisfied with school, experience hostility more often and have more negative emotions regarding school than girls. The obtained results are consistent with the data of the previous studies and give more specific information about children’s well-being in primary school because most of the previous studies devoted to school topic used a sample of adolescents.

Acknowledgments. The results of the project "Dynamics of children development during the primary school", carried out within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) in 2017, are presented in this work.