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Abstract :
[en] Background: Life satisfaction (LS) is a major component of adolescents’ subjective well-being, facilitating adaptive development and influencing health. Literature shows that social support influences adolescents LS. In addition, the social network can affect health-related behaviors of adults - individuals that smoke or exercise tend to group together. However, the effects of others` LS on adolescents’ individual evaluation of LS (the contagion hypothesis) is still to be addressed.
Objective(s): To test the contagion hypothesis of adolescents’ life satisfaction (how LS of proxies influences the individual LS appraisal).
Method: Data is from 9738 students (aged 9-20) from the 2018 HBSC Luxembourg survey. A multilevel analysis was used to evaluate LS, with the school classes as subjects (model 1) to estimate the influence of being in a certain school class. Later, FAS, age and gender were entered as control variables (model 2).
Results: The grand mean (intercept) for LS in model 1 was 7.57 (SE=.03, p<.001). For model 2, FAS (b=.47, SE=.03, p<.001), age (b=-.14, SE=.01, p<.001) and gender (b=-.23, SE=.04, p<.001) were significantly predictive of LS. The grand mean for LS, conditioned on the presence of FAS, age and gender, was 9.02 (SE=.05, p<.001). Interclass Correlation Coefficient decreased from model 1 (ICC=.08) to model 2 (ICC=.04).
Conclusions: Results suggest that part of the variance of LS can be explained by the school class level. In other words, school class clusters have an influence on their LS, indicating that the LS of adolescents from a class partially accounts for individual LS.
