The impact of psychological well-being and ill-being on academic performance: a longitudinal and cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Objective: There is limited empirical research investigating the relationship between well-being and academic achievement and existing studies are largely conducted using cross-sectional methodology constraining conclusions regarding causality.Method: This study conducted at a South Australian high school addresses this gap by longitudinally investigating well-being and 10 academic achievement. Separate hierarchical regressions were run for Semesters 1 and 2 measures of academic achievement using ill-being, well-being, and gender as predictors.Results: In each case, ill-being and gender made a significant contribution to the prediction of academic achievement on the first step of the hierarchical regression. However, when well-being was added in the second step, ill-being no longer made a significant contribution. Each well-being 15 subscale positively correlated with academic achievement with the strongest effect being for perseverance.Conclusion: Positive education may therefore offer educators an avenue for simultaneously improving the well-being of students and their academic achievement.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

• Adolescence is a critical developmental period in relation to mental health.

• Empirically, large-scale cross-sectional studies have consistently found measures of illbeing, including subclinical symptoms of depression and anxiety to be negatively correlated with academic achievement of middle and high school students.

• Intellectual ability is a considerable predictor of school performance accounting for approximately 25% of the variance in academic achievement.

What this topic adds:

• This study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between both positive and negative mental health and academic achievement using a longitudinal methodology.

• The findings indicate that well-being, in particular perseverance, has the strongest effect in relation to academic achievement.

• Positive education may offer educators an avenue for simultaneously improving the well-being of students and their academic achievement.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic achievement
• education
• adolescent
• wellbeing
• illbeing
• positive psychology

Disclosure statement

Declaration of interest: none.

Data availability

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Ethics

Informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects and procedures approved by The University of Adelaide, School of Psychology Human Research Ethics Sub-committee and the Department of Education and Child Development Research Unit (Approval Number: 2018-0024).

Notes

1. In Australia, Year 12 is the final year of high school and is generally completed by students aged 17 to 18 years of age.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.