Children’s Subjective Well-being: Personality and Demographic Correlates

1. Children’s Subjective Well-being: Personality and Demographic Correlates Dr Haridhan Goswami Researcher The Children’s Society Conference for the International Society for Child Indicators University of York 27th to 29th July 2011

2. Introduction • Past attempts in explaining variations in subjective well-being (SWB) • Demographic factors and SWB • Personality and SWB • Little evidence on the relation of demographic factors and personality with SWB among children

3. Objectives • To explore how much variance the demographic factors account for the SWB of children and young people (CYP) • To identify the amount of variance the personality factor explains for the SWB of the CYP • To explore the relative strength of both personality and demographic factors in explaining variance in the SWB of the CYP

4. Methods • Sampling and data collection • Participants • Data from just over 2400 young people (aged 10 to 15) are used for this component of study • Data processing and analysis • Data cleaning and analysis by SPSS • Checking psychometric properties by factor analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha • Univeriate analysis—mean or percentages • Bivariate analysis—Point bi-serial, Pearson r • Multivatiate analysis—Multiple linear regression

5. Methods (Cont…) • Measures • Demographic • Age (Year groups 6, 8, and 10) • Gender (Female, Male) • Subjective well-being • Personality • International Personality Item Pool • Big-Five Factor Markers (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness) • 25 items (5 items for each category). Each item contained five response categories (‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’)

6. Methods (Cont…) • Items used for measuring personality

7. Methods (Cont…) • Items used for measuring personality

8. Methods (Cont…) • Items used for measuring personality • Openness • Reliability • Cronbach’s alphas: 0.69 extraversion; 0.80 agreeableness; 0.72 conscientiousness; 0.78 emotional stability; 0.79 for openness.

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14. Results • Univariate analysis

15. Results (Cont…) • Bivariate analysis

16. Results (Cont…) • Multivariate analysis

17. Discussion • Demographic factors (age and gender) accounted for less than 4% of the variance in the SWB • Both personality and demographic characteristics explain less than 32% variation, of which personality factors alone account for about 28% of the variation. • Emotional stability appears to have the highest effect on young people’s well-being. Consciousness has the second highest effect. Age and extraversion appear to have jointly the third highest effect followed by Openness. Agreeableness has the lowest effect on SWB.

18. Conclusions • Both demographic and personality characteristics are useful for explaining variations in young people’s subjective well-being. • Although personality characteristics explain better, they did not rule out the effects of demographic factors. • This suggests that in addition to these demographic and personality characteristics, there are other important factors in young people’s lives that determine their well-being. Future studies need to explore those factors to better understand the subjective well-being of children and young people.

19. Limitations & future directions • Other demographic factors such as disabilities, learning difficulties, ethnic background, religious affiliation, country of birth, family structure, family economic condition to include • Life events to include • To look at the impact of personality on various domains of well-being • Other aspects of an individual’s personality such as self-esteem, locus of control to include • To examine interaction effects of extraversion and emotional stability on SWB • To examine interaction effects of gender and personality on SWB