| Extant research pertinent to youth's subjective well-being has identified several intrapersonal, environmental, and interpersonal variables that are correlated with life satisfaction during adolescence. Studies of life satisfaction during the adult years have gone beyond simply identifying correlates of well-being to demonstrating the development (i.e., temporal ordering) of life satisfaction and specifying which factors describe adults with extreme happiness. The current study employed nearly 700 adolescents, ages 11--18, in a two-year two-wave study that replicated these methodological techniques. Specifically, this study elucidated which important correlates of adolescents' life satisfaction are most influential in discriminating between youth who continually experience very high and low life satisfaction throughout adolescence. Findings indicated that no one variable is sufficient for very high life satisfaction throughout adolescence. Moreover, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) tests indicated that, in comparison to adolescents whose life satisfaction is consistently very low or consistently in the midrange, adolescents with very high life satisfaction are characterized by high academic and emotional self-efficacy, high social support from parents, teachers, and classmates, few internalizing behavior problems and a temperament low in neuroticism. The current study also aimed to identify risk factors for diminished life satisfaction, as well as variables that predict increases in life satisfaction. A discriminant function analysis revealed that high levels of initial (i.e., Wave 1) neuroticism, stressful life events, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, as well as low parental support and promotion of adolescents' psychological autonomy, predicted subsequent declines in adolescents' life satisfaction. In contrast, initial status on variables did not distinguish youth whose life satisfaction remained stable from those whose life satisfaction increased. Mixed-design ANOVA tests revealed that increases in parental support, as well as decreases in neuroticism and psychopathology, co-occurred with improved life satisfaction, while diminished social support from a variety of sources and increased externalizing behavior problems accompanied declines in life satisfaction. Analyses conducted to determine if developmental stage (early vs. late adolescence) acts as a moderator in the relationships between biopsychosocial variables and adolescent life satisfaction indicated that results were generalizable across adolescent age groups. |
