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Adolescent well-being subjective indicators of relationships in a Romanian and Spanish adolescent sample.Sergiu Bălţătescu*, Ferran Casas**, Adrian Hatos*, Irma Bertran**, and Mònica González** *Department of Sociology and Social Work. University of Oradea (Romania)**Research Institute on Quality of Life. Universitat de Girona (Spain) ThirsISCI conference, York July 26-29, 2011
Relationships • Of most importance throughout life • Critical in childhood and adolescence • The meaning , intensity and scope of relationship is changing with developmental stages • In adolescence, peer relationship become salient while influence of parents is lowering • Unselective peer-group relationships give way to the selective personal relationships, then with relationship with adolescents from another sex • There is an emotional (romantic) life without a proper relationship
Method • Spain • Two-stage cluster sample (Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) Centres/classes). • Four provinces of Catalonia. • N=1945 • Romania • N=930 • Bihorcounty • Stratified sample of the urban high-school population
Questionnaire • The Personal Well-Being Index (PWI) scale (Cummins, 2003; Cummins et al., 2003), 7 items version • Satisfaction with relationship with: • peers • friends • teachers • parents • Overall satisfaction with relationships (included in Personal Wellbeing Index). • Satisfaction with emotional life • A single item on overall life satisfaction (OLS). • Several items on satisfaction with other aspects of life and life domains, including a set of school-related items. All are measured on an 11-points scale (0 to 10)
Results: Personal well-being Index (from: Casas, Baltatescu at al. 2009) Note: Standard errors for all computed coefficients, except PWI are less than 0,1. For PWI the standard errors vary between 0,44 and 0,82.
Comparisons • Relationships with friends highest • Relationships with professors - the lowest • Romania: family relationship – very high • Spain: sentimental life – very low
Evaluation of the possibility of the inclusion of a new PWI item • Item: satisfaction with sentimental life • Motivation: • The sentimental life = the affective experiences associated with the romantic relations. • Useless to stress the importance of this domain for adolescents. • None of PWI items capture these domains. • The “personal relations” • too general to capture the romantic relationships. • Often in adolescence and youth the romantic emotions are consumed outside a (more or less stable) relationship.
Factorial structure Romania Spain
Unique contribution of domains to life as a whole Romania (7 items) R2=0,385 Romania (7+1 items) R2=0,405
Unique contribution of domains to life as a whole Spain (7 items) R2=0,370 Spain (7+1 items) R2=0,398
Evaluation of the possibility of the inclusion of a new PWI item: pros&cons Pro’s Con’s The item would steal a part of the variation from the satisfaction with personal relationships, an item from the same conceptual domain. • The item loads on the same factor as life as a whole and the other PWI items • With β=.17-.18, the item would be amongthemostimportant predictorsof the life as a whole • The item slightlyincrease the capacity of the Index to predict the levels of life as a whole.