Running head: FACTORS AFFECTING ADOLESCENT LIFE SATISFACTION

Factors Affecting Adolescent Life Satisfaction

ETR 562
Fall 2015
Russell OBrien
Adel Qahmash

Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 1
Literature Review ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Research Question .................................................................................................................................... 3
Methodology ............................................................................................................................................. 4
Variables of interest ................................................................................................................................. 4
Description of Statistical Analysis ......................................................................................................... 5
Results ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
Research question one ............................................................................................................................. 7
Research question two ............................................................................................................................. 8
Discussion and Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 10
Resources ................................................................................................................................................ 12

Introduction
Life satisfaction can be defined as the degree to which a person positively evaluates the
overall quality of his/her life as a whole (Veenhoven, 1996, p.6). This includes the feeling that a
person is moving towards key goals in life (Diener et al. 1999). A review of the scholarly
literature reveals that an individuals life satisfaction can be affected by external factors (Flouri
& Buchanan, 2002; Edwards & Lopez, 2006). These factors include family relationship,
substance use, friendship, school bullying, and many others.
Life satisfaction is important because it impacts youths physical health, social
relationships, and academic engagement as well as success (Lewis et al. 2011; Salmela-Aro and
Tuominen-Soini 2010; Suldo and Shaffer, 2008; Suldo et al., 2011a, b). Yet, research on children
and adolescent happiness has not been pursued to the degree that it has been with adults (Lewis,
Huebner, Malone and Valois, 2011). As with happiness, most studies have explored adults or
those close to adulthood, with research on adolescent life satisfaction receiving less attention
(Funk et al., 2006; Gilman& Huebner, 2003). This study seeks to redress this imbalance in a
small way by examining whether adolescent life satisfaction can be predicted by the use of the
following external factors: fathers socioeconomic status (SES), family relationships satisfaction,
drug use, alcohol use and school bullying. Moreover, the study seeks to explore the relationship
between gender and cyberbullying through two methods, e-mail and cell phone, by using
hierarchical log-linear analysis.

Literature Review
Edwards and Lopez (2006) conducted a mixed-methods study to explore perceived
family support, acculturation, and life satisfaction. Their findings showed that family support and
family orientation were statistically significant predictors of Latino adolescent life satisfaction.
Raboteg-Saric, Brajsa-Zganec and Sakic (2009) examined to what extent SES, well being, social
relationship aspects, and personal resources impacted adolescents life satisfaction. Their results
showed that parental support and family cohesion were statistically significant predictors of
adolescent life satisfaction. Additionally, some forms of adolescent substance use limit
socioeconomic opportunities, and have a lasting effect on health, thereby decreasing life
satisfaction (Bogart, Collins, Ellickson and Klein, 2007).
Life satisfaction appears to correlate to key intra-and interpersonal outcomes (Gilman &
Huebner, 2000). Studies of adolescents have shown statistically significant relationships between
life satisfaction and life experiences, both positive and negative (Gilman & Huebner, 2003) such
as parent-child conflict, substance use, stress and anxiety, and self-esteem in youth (Edwards
& Lopez, 2006, p. 4). Family relationships, manifested through family stress variables are very
important to students life satisfaction (Chappel, Suldo and Ogg, 2012). In fact, Chappel, Suldo
and Oggs study (2012) found that family stress is inversely related to students life satisfaction.
Interestingly, student SES itself was not a significant unique predictor of students life
satisfaction (Chappel, Suldo and Ogg, 2012). The weak association between SES and adolescent
life satisfaction supports prior research findings that higher incomes are not associated with
better subjective well being (Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002).
Substance use in adolescence seems to have lasting social, behavioral and economic
effects (Bachman, Wadworth, OMalley, Johnston and Schulenberg, 1997; Jessor & Jessor,

1977; Newcomb & Bentler, 1986; Ringel, Ellickson and Collins, 2006). Also, continued use of
substances may bring about lower subjective well-being over time (Bogart, Collins, Ellickson
and Klein, 2007).
Of note, life satisfaction and student engagement in adolescents was the subject of a
quantitative research methodological study by Lewis, Huebner, Malone and Valois (2011). They
surveyed over 1600 United States middle school students and hypothesized that adolescent life
satisfaction and student engagement variables would exhibit bidirectional relationships. Their
results showed a statistically significant bidirectional relationship between life satisfaction and
cognitive engagement and non-significant relationships between life satisfaction and emotional
and behavioral student engagement. This offers evidence that adolescent life satisfaction impacts
adolescent cognitive engagement, which has critical long-lasting effects on adolescent
development (Lewis, Huebner, Malone and Valois, 2011).
Adolescent life satisfaction may also be affected by bullying, and especially, the newer
phenomenon of cyberbullying. Lapidot-Lefler & Dolev-Cohen (2015) found that cyberbullying
is done less often than school bullying. They also found no correlation between gender and
victim or gender and audience. This paper seeks to look closer at gender and cyberbullying
through two different methods: e-mail and cellphone. It will do so through a hierarchical loglinear analysis of the dataset we used.

Research Question
This study poses two questions:
1. Can fathers SES, family relationships satisfaction, drug use, alcohol use and school
bullying predict adolescents life satisfaction?
2. Is there an effect between gender and school bullying and cyberbullying?

Methodology
This study employed a secondary data analysis approach. The data set we used, health
behavior in school-aged children 2006 (HBSC), came from a study conducted by a worldwide
organization known as World Health Organization (WHO). The main objective of this institution
was to conduct a longitudinal survey study that was geared toward adolescents school and
health behaviors.
In 2006, WHO conducted a survey study to gather data addressing the following themes:
health behaviors, school behaviors, nutrition, family relationship, and perceived socioeconomic
status, school climate, perceived social environment, psychological attributes, and personal
circumstances. The participants of this study were students from from 227 schools across the
United States. A total of 10,577 students participated in the survey. The response rate was 87.2
percent, which decreased the original sample size from 10,577 to 9,227.
The survey consists of 134 items. In this study we examined 9 items. Six items were
selected for question one (life satisfaction, fathers SES, family relationships satisfaction, drug
use, alcohol use and school bullying), and three items for question 2 (gender, school bullying and
cyberbullying).

Variables of interest
As we mentioned early, this study attempts to answer the following questions:
1. Can fathers SES, family relationships satisfaction, drug use, alcohol use and school
bullying predict adolescents life satisfaction?
2. Is there an effect/interaction between gender and school bullying and cyberbullying?
For question one, we were interested to assess whether adolescents life satisfaction (DV)
can be predicted by the following predictors (IVs): fathers SES, family relationships

satisfaction, drug use, alcohol use and school bullying. The following figure illustrates the
research model of question one.

Fathers SES
Predictors (IVs)

family relationships
satisfaction

Adolescents life satisfaction

Drug use
DV

Alcohol use
school bullying

Figure 1: Question 1 research model

For the second question, we tested three categorical variables (gender, cyberbullying
using computer, and cyberbullying using cellphone) to assess the effect and interaction among
these variables.

Description of Statistical Analysis

Based on our research questions, two statistical tests were applied. For question one we
used ordinal regression to predict adolescents life satisfaction. The rationale of using ordinal
regression is that the scale point of dependent variable (0 = worst life possible, 10 = best life
possible) is in ordinal format. For the second question, we applied hierarchical long-linear
analysis to examine the effect among three categorical variables. Table 1 shows the range for the
three categorical variables.

Table 1
Range of the Categorical Variables
Variable

Range

Gender
Cyberbullying
using computer
Cyberbullying
using computer

1-2
1-5
1-5

Results
Data screening: before applying ordinal regression and hierarchical long-linear, we
obtained descriptive statistics to check the following elements: skewness and kurtosis, missing
values, and outliers. The descriptive statistics results shows that 88.9% (8207 out of 9227) of
data was missing across the 9 variables, which may affect the results of both ordinal regression
and applied hierarchical long-linear results. The final total of valid cases was N = 1027. Figure 2
shows in details the amount of missing and valid data.

Figure 2:

Descriptive statistics results

Research question one

Can fathers SES, family relationships satisfaction, drug use, alcohol use and school bullying
predict adolescents life satisfaction?
As we mentioned earlier, we applied ordinal regression to assess whether fathers SES,
family relationships satisfaction, drug use, alcohol use and school bullying predict adolescents
life satisfaction. The ordinal regression SPSS results show that, the model with predictors fits
significantly better (p < 0.001) than intercepts-only, or the thresholds model (see figure 3).
However, the goodness of fit model shows to be significant, which violated the Pearson
assumption. The reason behind this violation is the large amount of cells with zero frequencies
(see figure 4). Regarding the assumption of test of proportional odds, SPSS results revealed that
test of proportional odds have been met with p value (0.086) greater that 0.05 (see figure 5).

Figure 3:

Model fitting results

Figure 4:

The percentage of cells with zero frequencies

Figure 5:

Test of parallel lines results

The parameter estimates table shows (see figure 5) that out of the five predictors, three
were statistically significant for adolescents life satisfaction. These predictors are family
relationship p value (0.001) less than 0.05, school bullying p value (0.002) less than 0.05, and
drug use p value (0.007) lees than 0.05.

Figure 5:

Parameter estimates

Research question two

Is there an effect between gender and cyberbullying using computer and using cellphone?
According to the cross tabulation table, female students more likely to be cyberbullied via
computers and cellphones than male students.

Figure 6: Cross tabulation table

The SPSS output for hierarchical long linear of that three way association shows that the
saturated model fit perfectly (see figure 7), because that the observed counts are equal to
expected counts (see appendix A).

Figure 7:

Saturated model

The K-Way effect table reveals that the highest way association (gender*bullied using
computer*bullied using cellphone) is not statistically significant with p value (.414) greater than
0.05. However, 2-way association shows to be statistically significant with p value (0.001) less
than 0.05(see figure 8).

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Figure 8:

Saturated model

Partial association was used to assess which specific associations are significant.
According to SPSS output, bullied using computer * bullied using cellphone is the only
significant 2- way association.

Figure 9:

Partial association
Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, we have looked at factors predicting adolescents life satisfaction using
ordinal regression analysis as well as a hierarchical log-linear analysis of the effect between
gender and cyberbullying. Our findings showed that there were three statistically significant

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predictors of adolescents life satisfaction, which were satisfied family relationship, drug use,
and school bullying. This papers literature review showed that family relationship and drug use
are critical component of adolescents life satisfaction (Edwards & Lopez, 2006; Raboteg-Saric,
Brajsa-Zganec and Sakic, 2009; Chappel, Suldo and Ogg, 2012; Bogart, Collins, Ellickson and
Klein, 2007). Fathers SES and alcohol use were not statistically significant predictors of
adolescent life satisfaction.
In addition, this literature review featured Lapidot-Lefler & Dolev-Cohens (2015)
discussion of school bullyings effect on adolescent life satisfaction. They found that
cyberbullying is done less often than school bullying and no correlation between gender and
victim or gender and audience. We hypothesized that cyberbullying is a growing threat to
adolescent life satisfaction and wished to look closer at this phenomenon through two methods of
threat: delivery by e-mails and cellphones. Our hierarchical log-linear analysis showed of the
two, cell phone cyberbullying was statistically significant, and we assert that future research
should be focused on this subject, in order to mediate its effect on adolescent life satisfaction,
and in turn, student cognitive engagement.

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Appendix A