The interplay between school and home location and its relationship with children’s subjective well-being

ABSTRACT

The aim is to determine the extent to which children’s subjective well-being (SWB) varies according to age, gender and the fact of living in the same context as the school (urban/rural) or not, in representative samples of 8, 10 and 12-year-olds (N = 3708) in Spain. The existence of a match between schoolchildren’s living context and that of their school was the most common situation for the participants. The results, analysed using linear regression models and analysis of variance (ANOVA) with complex samples, show that a match between home and school context is not associated with statistically different levels of SWB in the three age groups (8, 10 and 12-year-olds) or by gender. Whereas no interactions between age, gender, school context and home location contribute to explaining overall life satisfaction, some do contribute to explaining the modified version of the Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS) used here.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective well-being
• living context
• children
• adolescents
• complex sample analysis
• gender

Acknowledgements

Particular thanks are due to Barney Griffiths for editing the English. This article is dedicated to the memory of our colleague Joan Romans who left us unexpectedly while this article was being written.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mònica González-Carrasco http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3677-8175

Ferran Casas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-3442

Ferran Viñas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4994-5000

Sara Malo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3561-0610

Gemma Crous http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3177-1356