ArticlePDF Available

Children's school, classroom, social well-being and health in New Zealand mid to low decile primary schools

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

There is increasing pressure on schools in New Zealand to address children's social and emotional needs, together with learning needs. The present survey of 461 children and parents from mid to low decile primary schools was conducted to examine the current state of children's social and emotional well-being (as part of a wider study). Results indicate children are largely positive in the domains surveyed. The majority (92.1%) of children reported liking school and 92.4% felt safe, although 14% of children reported being teased more than five times in the previous week. Measures of classroom, social and health indicators ofwell-being were also high. Parents 'responses were low to moderately correlated to their child's, and the survey also showed moderate internal reliability. Although mostly positive, there are some areas for improvement which have been highlighted in the discussion of these results. This study adds to New Zealand data on school children's well-being.
Content may be subject to copyright.
New Zealand Journal of Education Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2009 79
Children’s School, Classroom,
Social Well-being and Health in New
Zealand Mid to Low Decile Primary
Schools
NICOLA SWAIN-CAMPBELL AND DENISE QUINLAN
Department of Psychological Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine
ABSTRACT: There is increasing pressure on schools in New Zealand to address
children’s social and emotional needs, together with learning needs. The present survey
of 461 children and parents from mid to low decile primary schools was conducted to
examine the current state of children’s social and emotional well-being (as part of a
wider study). Results indicate children are largely positive in the domains surveyed. The
majority (92.1%) of children reported liking school and 92.4% felt safe, although 14%
of children reported being teased more than ve times in the previous week. Measures of
classroom, social and health indicators of well-being were also high. Parents’ responses
were low to moderately correlated to their child’s, and the survey also showed moderate
internal reliability. Although mostly positive, there are some areas for improvement
which have been highlighted in the discussion of these results. This study adds to New
Zealand data on school children’s well-being.
KEYWORDS: Well-being, health, survey, school children.
INTRODUCTION
Little data is available on the state of children’s health and happiness in schools today. For
every 100 scientic journal articles on sadness there is only one on happiness (Seligman,
2002). Media coverage suggests children are being bullied and under more pressure than
ever before. In the UK media it was recently reported that teachers are calling for a Royal
Commission of Inquiry to investigate why Britain’s children are so unhappy: “There is
rising concern that more and more children are coming to school unable to learn because
their lives are so dispirited and they are under stress” (Garner, 2008).
Likewise in the academic literature there has been signicant research attention
focused on poor outcomes for children. Future adverse consequences of bullying and school
drop-out are well documented (e.g. Brown & Taylor, 2008; Fergusson, Swain-Campbell
& Horwood, 2002). The link between future criminal behaviour and childhood economic
disadvantage has also been evidenced (Rutter, Giller & Hagel, 1998). Notably, these effects
have been found to be mediated by family, individual, school and peer factors (Fergusson,
Swain-Campbell & Horwood, 2004). Indeed in John Hattie’s landmark review (2009) of
factors which inuence achievement, family, individual, peer and school factors have all
80 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
been found to signicantly inuence school achievement.
In the adult literature there has been an increased focus on well-being and happiness
and much has been learned as a result (Deiner, Lucas & Oishi, 2005; Fredrickson, 1998;
Fredrickson & Losada, 2005; Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005; Lyubomirsky, Sheldon
& Schkade, 2005; Peterson, Park & Seligman, 2005; Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson,
2005). Although adults’ well-being has been found to be relatively stable over time (Lucas
& Donnellan, 2007), happiness can change signicantly over time in response to specic
external events (Veenhoven, 2000, 2004). Importantly, research has also shown that we are
not merely at the mercy of external events; people can successfully act to increase their
happiness (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade, 2005; Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson,
2005). In addition, happy people live longer, healthier lives and are generally more sociable
and concerned for others than unhappy people (Seligman, 2002).
Given the benets associated with happier lives, and the fact that happiness or
well-being levels can be changed as a result of volitional activity, it would seem important
and useful to study children’s perceived well-being. We need to understand more about
the factors that affect well-being in childhood before we begin to promote higher levels of
well-being in children and, ultimately, in adults.
The notion that it might be possible to intervene in developmental processes around
well-being and happiness has led to growth in research in this area (Park, 2004; Froh,
Seck & Emmons, 2008; Shocket & Ham, 2004; Merry, McDowell, Wild, Bir & Cunliffe,
2004; Horowitz & Garber, 2006; Gillham, Shatté & Freres, 2000). It is well-established
that emotional intelligence is mostly learned, unlike traditional concepts of intelligence as
measured by IQ, and more powerfully predicts future success (Salovey & Mayer, 1990;
Goleman, 1998; Solovey, Caruso & Mayer, 2004). As a result, emotional intelligence has
become another area in which schools can hope to ‘educate’ their students. Consequently
schools are increasingly seen as suitable places to implement programmes for social and
emotional education. This is most evident in the rise of anti-bullying campaigns and suicide
prevention.
Before the implementation of these programmes, which aim to enhance children’s
social and emotional, physical or psychological well-being, it may be helpful to have a
snapshot of how the children are currently doing in these areas of development. Academic
markers of development are routinely kept but there is little information about children’s
social or emotional well-being.
Constructs and theories of well-being vary widely. Subjective well-being (SWB),
a measure used worldwide, includes an assessment of positive and negative affect and a
cognitive evaluation of life satisfaction (Diener, Lucas & Oishi, 2005; Pavot & Diener,
2007). Some theories attempt to explain well-being as a result not just of positive feelings
about one’s life (SWB), but also as a result of the positive functioning of that life. Keyes’
mental health continuum (MHC) is probably the most comprehensive approach to well-
being, including as it does a three factor model of emotional well-being (positive affect
plus life satisfaction), psychological well-being and social well-being (Keyes, 2002).
It assesses feelings about one’s life as well as evaluations of the functioning of that life
across a number of life domains. It has been used with adolescents (Keyes, 2006), but
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 81
not with children as young as the current sample. Measures of SWB have been developed
for adolescents (Huebner & Gilman, 2002; Gilman & Huebner, 2000; Huebner, 1995).
The Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale developed by Huebner is intended
to assess life satisfaction with ve specic domains (School, Self, Family, Friends and
Living Environment). Given the focus of this study on school rather than family or living
environment, it was decided not to use this scale.
Since the present study was conducted, details of a School Children’s Happiness
Inventory (SCHI) have been published which may be useful for future surveys (Ivens, 2007).
The need for such scales is well recognised, but at the time this research was conducted
there were no accepted and validated instruments for use with children to assess school
well-being, which is predictive of a range of behavioural and academic outcomes.
The present study investigates the well-being of a group of children in some mid to
low decile New Zealand schools. It was hypothesised that children in these schools may be
experiencing some difculties which may be evident in many of the questionnaire variables
including: school satisfaction, classroom factors such as friendship and sense of belonging,
social adjustment and health. These would be important mediating factors in potential future
adverse outcomes and important to document. The study aims to capture both positive and
negative factors inuencing well-being. A snapshot of positive variables like enjoyment of
school, friendships and pride will also be captured by the present questionnaire.
METHOD
Participants
A cohort of nine Dunedin schools had formed independently for development purposes.
Eight of these schools agreed to participate in this research (deciles 1-6; median decile 3-4).
Decile refers to a social economic rating made in New Zealand according to a standardised
formula, and decile ratings range from 1 (low) to 10 (high). The estimated roll of these
schools combined was 959. Although most students (679, 71%) assented to participating in
the study and completed study questionnaires, only those whose parents returned consent
forms to the school have been analysed in the present study (461, 48.1%).
Ethical approval to conduct the study was given by the Southern Regional Ethics
Committee.
Instruments
A Likert scale questionnaire was devised. It aimed to measure four components of well-
being at school: school variables, classroom factors, emotional well-being and health
behaviours. No existing scale could be found which had been validated for this age group,
so the present versions were designed by the researchers in consultation with participating
school principals and an educational consultant. This development process involved the
researchers devising a list of variables they wished to examine. This survey was also used
for an examination of change following an intervention, so items were included that it
was hypothesised would change as a result of the intervention. The educational consultant
then critiqued and narrowed down the list. Because of the age of the children questions
were required to be easily understandable with a simple response format. Sample surveys
82 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
were taken to a meeting of school principals, some of whom also took them back to school
boards for comment. Wording of questions was changed and some questions the schools
found objectionable were removed. The surveys were then piloted on a group of school
children who were not involved in the study to conrm face validity and ease of use.
Final questionnaires were then prepared. Children’s questionnaires were comprised of 24
questions; parents’ questionnaires contained 18 questions (see Appendix 1).
The students’ questionnaire covered a range of well-being variables. Positive affect
and life satisfaction are dimensions of emotional well-being in the MHC scale (Keyes,
2002). These dimensions were captured by questions on enjoyment of school, having fun
in class and celebrating good things. The MHC social well-being scale includes measures
of social acceptance and social integration and the psychological well-being scale includes
measures of self-acceptance and positive relations with others. These were assessed by
questions about relationships with peers and teachers, ease of making friends and having
them to play with at school. Questions about bullying and not feeling safe at school also
provided information on these dimensions. Questions about condence, self-responsibility
and pro-social behaviours tap constructs of self-efcacy, environmental mastery and
autonomy which contribute to psychological well-being.
Overall, we believe the survey questionnaire provided acceptable coverage of the
dimensions of emotional, social and psychological well-being which constitute the broadest
denition of SWB.
Procedure
Children were given a questionnaire for themselves and a parental survey to complete
at home near the beginning of the school year 2007. Most children completed their
questionnaires in class. Teachers read out questions to younger students to assist them.
Where children’s questionnaires were taken home, parents were asked to read out questions
only for very small children and were otherwise asked to allow children to complete them
privately. Some children completed their forms several months into the school year. Forms
were distributed by their classroom teacher and returned to either teacher or school ofce.
Teachers and schools were instructed to simply collect questionnaires and were not given
any authority to read or review.
Analysis
Analysis was conducted using SPSS 16.0 (SPSS) for windows and Stata 10.1 (Stata).
Descriptive data was obtained for demographics and all questions. Correlations
were conducted. We estimated the structure of the scale using a conrmatory factor analysis
with stepwise increase in the number of factors until we found questions with correlations
over 0.4 in two factors. We estimated the internal reliability of the scale using Cronbach’s
alpha, and in stepwise fashion removed the questions with the poorest correlation until no
further improvement was found.
Results
Forty-seven percent (47.2%) of parents described their child as being New Zealand
European, almost 3% (2.8%) described their child as Māori, 6.2% responded that their
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 83
child was both Māori and New Zealand European, and a small number identied as Samoan
(1.5%) or Samoan/New Zealand European (1.2%). The remaining children had a wide
range of ethnic backgrounds and combinations of ethnicities including: Middle Eastern,
Mexican, Cambodian, British, Canadian, Filipino, Zimbabwean, Tokelauan, Nepalese etc.
Table 1 describes the ages of children that responded to the survey. This was gathered from
parents writing their child’s date of birth and was not lled in by all parents (69.7%).
TABLE 1: Percentages of students at each age at the
beginning of the year surveys were administered
Age of student
(years)
Percentage
57.4
6 16.6
7 13.8
8 12.3
914.2
10 14.8
11 13.2
12 4.0
13 4.3
Demographics of schools by decile are presented in Table 2. It can be seen that
almost half the data (47.7%) comes from the two decile 4 schools, with the rest of the
respondents spread throughout the decile range.
TABLE 2: School data by decile rating
Decile Number of schools Roll Number of respondents Percent of sample
1 1 70 17 3.6
2 2 139 46 10.0
31170 40 8.7
4 2 330 220 47.7
5 1 150 107 23.2
61 100 31 6.7
Total 8959 461 100
An analysis was conducted on the correlation between children’s answers to
questions and parents’/caregivers’ answers, where the questions were the same or similar.
Correlations for these questions correlations were small (.28 and .20) to moderate (.31
and .43) (R2 between .429 and .202; see Table 3). This indicates that parents have a low
TABLE 3: Pearson Correlations (and levels of signicance) between child and parents’ responses to
similar survey questions
Question Does your child
enjoy school?
Does your
child seem to
have lots of
friends?
Has your child told
you they’ve been
picked on in the
last month?
Does their teacher
seem friendly to
the children?
Do you like school? .429 (.000)
How many friends do you have
in your class?
.280 (.000)
Has a child at school teased you
in the last week?
.202 (.002)
Does your teacher like you? .307 (.000)
84 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
to moderate concordance with their children on general issues related to school. Parents
are most likely to agree with their children on matters of liking school and teachers liking
children, and less likely to agree with children about having friends and being teased.
Where issues are sensitive or problematic for the child, e.g. being teased, it may not be
safe to assume even a moderate concordance between the knowledge of parents about their
children’s views or experiences.
Table 4 shows correlations from child survey responses. In all other tables, results
from children are presented (see Tables 5, 6 and 7). The nal table about health has some
information which was only asked of parents (see Table 8). Table 4 shows correlations of
children liking school. Correlations are presented (p<.05). Factors most highly correlated
(moderate correlation 0.3-0.5) with liking school are having fun in class, being proud of
their school, nding the school work interesting and thinking their teacher likes them.
TABLE 4: Correlation coefcients for child survey responses to “do you like school?” and all other
child responses
Question Correlation
coefcient
How easy is it to make friends in your class? .173**
How many friends do you have in your class? .030
Do you have friends to play with at lunchtime? .065
Does your teacher like you? .332**
If you had a problem at school would a teacher help? .289**
Has a child at school teased you in the last week? .062
Do you like working in a pair with someone you haven’t worked with before? .260**
Do you have fun in class? .458**
Is the work you do in class interesting? .398**
Do you feel uncomfortable when someone praises you? .061
On school days do you usually eat breakfast? .095
Do you feel safe in school? .199**
Are you proud of your school? .384**
Are you happy to answer a question in class? .247**
If you lose something do you look for it? .079
Do you feel condent to speak in front of your class? .278**
Do you nd it easy to keep to the school rules? .234**
When you can’t nd your pencil in class, do you blame someone else? .171**
Do you like it when someone praises you? .225**
Do you feel jealous when someone else gets praised? .033
Can you tell how someone is feeling when you listen to them talking? .149**
If another child had a problem at school would you help? .305**
In class we celebrate when we do good things. .267**
** Correlation is signicant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Table 5 shows data relating to the impact of the school environment on child well-
being. The majority of children say they like school, they haven’t been teased, they are
proud of their school, it is easy to keep the rules, and they would help other children.
Although these positive responses are the most common there are a signicant number of
responses that portray more negative feelings. Of particular note are the 14% of children
who responded that they had been teased more than ve times in the last week. Taken
together, 50.6% of children had been teased in the last week. Some of this could have been
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 85
minor, although it is worth noting that almost 5% of children reported that they never feel
safe at school.
TABLE 5: School factors in child wellbeing shown in percentages
Question 1 (low/
never)
2 3 4 5 (high/
always)
Do you like school? 4.7 3.2 24.5 19.8 47.8
Has a child at school teased you in the last week? 49.4 20.4 10.0 6.2 14.0
Do you feel safe in school? 4.8 2.8 18.6 15.1 58.7
Are you proud of your school? 7.4 1.8 13.5 16.8 60.7
Do you nd it easy to keep to the school rules? 3.0 2.5 21.8 15.9 56.7
If another child had a problem at school, would you
help?
2.0 2.3 17.1 25.7 52.9
Table 6 also portrays a generally positive result. The majority of students responded
in the highest category to “How many friends do you have in class?” “Does your teacher
like you?” and “Do you have fun in class?” The results were more varied for “If you had
a problem at school would your teacher help?”, “Is the work you do in class interesting?”,
“Are you happy to answer a question in class?”, “Do you feel comfortable to speak in front
of your class?” and “In class we celebrate when we do good things.” Although between
32% and 48% of children were able to respond to these questions in the highest category,
these results indicate some room for improvement.
TABLE 6: Classroom factors in child wellbeing shown in percentages
Question 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high)
How many friends do you have in your class? 1.7 13.2 16.1 18.6 50.4
Does your teacher like you? 2.8 2.0 16.1 19.8 59.3
If you had a problem at school would your teacher help? 4.0 3.7 29.0 15.4 47.9
Do you have fun in class? 4.2 2.7 20.1 18.4 54.6
Is the work you do in class interesting? 6.5 6.7 34.7 19.6 32.5
Are you happy to answer a question in class? 4.0 4.3 31.5 15.9 44.3
Do you feel comfortable to speak in front of your class? 13.4 8.6 31.2 10.8 36.0
In class we celebrate when we do good things. 6.3 7.3 33.3 16.0 37.1
Table 7 looks at questions which ask about children’s social and emotional
development. It must be noted here that children in this study range from ve years old to
13 years old, and at the younger end of the range would be expected to be less positive about
some of these variables. Taken together these factors indicate largely positive development
for this group of children, with more than half saying they always have friends to play with
at lunchtime and have a sense of responsibility for their possessions. Almost half found it
very easy to make friends, are developing communication skills and are comfortable being
praised.
Table 8 is combined results of parent and children questions on health-related
variables. The high correlation between child and parent responses can be seen on the
question of daily breakfast, with parents only slightly over-estimating the daily intake of
breakfast. The top category of school absence days is more than 20 days (2.9%); together
39.1% of school children had more than ve days’ absence from school in a year. In the
same year more than two-thirds of children had visited their GP two or more times.
86 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
TABLE 7: Social adjustment factors in child wellbeing shown in percentages
Question 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high)
How easy is it to make friends in your class? 4.2 5.7 28.8 16.9 44.4
Do you have friends to play with at lunchtime? 2.7 4.2 15.9 20.3 56.8
Do you like working in a pair with someone you haven’t
worked with before?
17.7 9.7 36.4 8.5 27.7
Do you feel uncomfortable when someone praises you? 35.2 7.8 27.2 7.8 22.0
If you lose something do you look for it? 4.3 1.3 16.3 12.3 65.8
When you can’t nd your pencil in class, do you blame
someone else?
76.0 7.7 7.4 3.1 5.9
Do you like it when someone praises you? 8.1 3.5 28.0 11.4 49.0
Do you feel jealous when someone else gets praised? 56.4 9.0 17.7 3.1 13.8
Can you tell how someone is feeling when you listen to them
talking?
4.6 3.1 30.9 16.4 45.0
TABLE 8: Health factors in child wellness (data from parents and children) shown in percentages
Question 1 (low) 2 3 4 5 (high)
On school days how often do you eat breakfast? (range:
0, 1, 2-3, 4, 5)
2.5 5.5 7.0 5.0 80.0
During the school week how often does your child usu-
ally eat breakfast? (range: 0, 1, 2-3, 4, 5)
1.0 2.1 6.9 6.9 83.0
How many days was your child absent from school in
the last year? (range: 0-5, 6-10, 10-15, 16-20, 20+)
60.9 25.9 6.6 3.6 2.9
How often has your child seen their GP/doctor in the last
year? (range: 0, 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6+)
11.5 25.5 39.2 13.6 10.1
Data from parents suggest that 25 children (8.9%) have been stood down/excluded
from class or school in the previous year. This level of punishment for behavioural problems
is higher than local or national gures would predict (0.54% for 5-9 year olds and 4.7%
for 10-14 year olds; Ministry of Education, 2008). This has been omitted from tables as it
is the authors’ belief that this gure is over-estimated because of ambiguity in the question
(use of word “excluded” instead of “suspended”). Parents questionnaires also asked for
the number of days a child was absent from school in the last year. This gure was not
correlated (p<.001) with liking school, being teased, feeling safe or having fun at school. It
was also not correlated with the parents’ response to: “Do you think it is important that your
child goes to school every day?”, and showed a small but highly signicant correlation (r2
= 0.245, p<.001) with GP visits as reported by parents.
The questionnaire used was itself tested for internal reliability. The Cronbach’s
standardised alpha was 0.77 showing moderate reliability. We performed stepwise removal
of the questions that were poorly correlated until we gained no further improvement
(questions 7, 16, 19 and 21) which led to an improvement of Cronbach’s alpha to 0.82.
A factor analysis was performed to see if the questionnaire ndings could reliably
be explained by fewer factors. A conrmatory factor analysis found three factors explained
only 26% of the variance. The rst factor contributed 15% of the variance. The second
and third factors contained only two questions each and provided a small improvement
in variance explained. The one factor solution alone accounted for 17% of the variance
(p<.001). The rst factor was no more internally reliable. The one factor solution is shown
in Table 9. There were two questions on praise that were dropped by the analysis after
failing a test for uniqueness.
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 87
Table 9: Factor analysis of questionnaire using a one factor solution (rows with correlations over 0.4
are highlighted)
Questions Correlations
Do you like school? 0.581
How easy is it to make friends in your class? 0.328
How many friends do you have in your class? 0.192
Do you have friends to play with at lunchtime? 0.200
Does your teacher like you? 0.564
If you had a problem at school would a teacher help? 0.510
Has a child at school teased you in the last week? -0.106
Do you like working in a pair with someone you haven’t worked with before? 0.470
Do you have fun in class? 0.651
Is the work you do in class interesting? 0.613
On school days do you usually eat breakfast? 0.233
Do you feel safe in school? 0.396
Are you proud of your school? 0.593
Are you happy to answer a question in class? 0.464
If you lose something do you look for it? 0.116
Do you feel condent to speak in front of your class? 0.415
Do you nd it easy to keep to the school rules? 0.387
When you can’t nd your pencil in class, do you blame someone else? -0.227
Do you like it when someone praises you? 0.493
Can you tell how someone is feeling when you listen to them talking? 0.336
If another child had a problem at school would you help? 0.552
In class we celebrate when we do good things. 0.531
DISCUSSION
The questionnaire in this study asks children how they feel about school in terms of school,
classroom, social and health domains. The results suggest the majority of children from
this survey are doing well in all of these areas, that is, they are responding positively. This
is in contrast with expectations (Garner, 2008). Children have reported very high levels of
liking school, with 92.1% reporting it was okay or better. Similarly, 92.3% of children feel
mostly safe at school. Almost 91% of children reported being quite proud of their school
or higher. Almost 70% of children said they had not been teased at all in the last week; this
suggests that even at a low threshold of being teased (rather than bullied) most children do
not report any experience of this.
It seems that liking school is related to a wide range of social, emotional and school
factors. Of interest is that the highest correlations of liking school were all related to the
classroom environment rather than more social and emotional factors. Most highly rated
were: having fun in class, being proud of their school, nding the work interesting, and
thinking their teacher likes them. There is an important message here for schools; that their
core business, classroom learning, is what makes children like school. Teachers themselves,
given their predominant role in inuencing the classroom environment, appear to be the
most inuential factor on children liking school. Therefore, presuming that liking school is
important, looking to outside programmes that claim to enhance children’s well-being may
be less essential than we think, while investing in teachers’ skills to work effectively with a
88 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
range of children, and to implement whatever programmes are adopted, may be even more
important than we currently appreciate.
This study represents children from low to mid decile schools. They are therefore
more likely to be experiencing multiple disadvantages than an average sample. To report
these high indicators of social and emotional well-being and health is very encouraging.
Although these levels of well-being indicators are high, this however raises the question of
whether it is acceptable for the majority of children to report positively on these measures,
or whether this might be a requirement for all our children. Schools and their communities
may want to reect on whether nearly 8% of students disliking school is an acceptable or
‘natural’ level, similar to the concept of a certain level of unemployment being considered
natural.
Interestingly, parental responses indicated a moderate concordance with their
children. Where the same or similar questions were asked of both parent and child their
answers were similar where the questions were not about a sensitive or problematic area.
This allows us to view data from children as a more reliable measure and vice-versa.
Provided we are not asking parents about issues which may be sensitive or difcult for
their children, then asking only one of the parent and child dyad will result in acceptable
ndings.
The number of days absent from school was found to be not related to whether
children liked school, were teased, felt safe or had fun. It was appropriately related to how
many GP visits children had made. That parent-rated absenteeism was not related to the
child’s’ perception of emotional and social factors at school is a noteworthy nding. Of all
the factors considered, it would be desirable for school absenteeism to be only related to
illness, which seems likely in this sample.
A strength of this study for local readers is that it has been conducted in New
Zealand. Often research concerning child well-being comes from major research works
from the USA or UK (see references). Although interesting, it is crucial that when a dialogue
about New Zealand children is opened there is good quality New Zealand data to be added
to the debate. A possible weakness of this data is that it represents a major South Island
city, and as such may differ in composition in terms of ethnic diversity than more northern
centres and may under-represent Maori. Useful future research might be to administer the
questionnaire in areas of New Zealand that may be expected to differ from Dunedin in
terms of well-being to provide a more complete picture.
Possible limitations of this study include low response rate (49%). This arises in
part from our ethical restraint of only including children whose parents returned a consent
form to school. Seventy-one percent of children completed the questionnaire and signed
an assent for their data to be used. In these areas of multiple disadvantage 49% may be
considered an acceptable return rate from parents without offer of payment or any other
incentive. Future studies could include an incentive to increase consent rates.
Self-report might also be considered a limitation of the present study. However
moderate concordance between parents and their children’s opinions suggests that there is
good agreement between raters, certainly on less sensitive or problematic areas. Children
(and their parents) may have rated more positively if they thought schools might read their
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 89
responses, even though they were assured this was not the case.
Another possible limitation of this study is the use of a non-standardised questionnaire.
The authors attempted to nd a suitable existing questionnaire but none were identied that
had been validated with this age group. Although some improvements could be made to the
questionnaire, the test of internal validity showed it to be moderately reliable (Cronbach’s
alpha 0.77). Thus the results cannot be directly compared to international studies, but future
studies may choose to use this new instrument to compare with the sample presented here.
Since this research was undertaken, further scales have been developed and this scale
could now be compared to others (Ivens, 2007). A factor analysis revealed that the scale
developed in this study could reliably be treated as one factor. The analysis also showed
several questions which could be removed to increase reliability and a shorter version of
the questionnaire could be developed for further testing.
This study makes no attempt to analyse student achievement. It was not the goal of
the present study to make conclusions about achievement or academic success, but more
simply to establish the perceptions of children and their parents about factors linked to
well-being. Although the present study provides no evidence to support this claim, the links
between some of the items measured and achievement are well-established. For example,
from Hattie’s synthesis of meta-analyses (2009), the Cohen’s d values for teacher-student
relationship (d=0.72) and peer inuences (d=0.53) put them among those inuences which
have the greatest impact on student achievement outcomes.
The present research adds to child well-being research. This body of research, as
discussed in the Introduction, is usually concerned with poor outcomes and continuing
problems (see Seligman, 2002). We have found that most children are responding positively
even in this less afuent area. Liking school appears to be more related to a child’s teacher
liking them, being proud of school, having interesting work to do and fun in class, than to
a child’s socio-economic circumstances. This nding suggests that schools in New Zealand
are a major positive inuence on our children and highlights the important role that teachers
play in enhancing the well-being of the children they teach.
The current ndings that children largely like school, feel safe, proud and not teased
in school raises the question of whether future interventions should be aimed at those
unhappy, unsafe, bullied children, on whole school wellness programmes, or on developing
the classroom teachers who are a major inuence on child well-being. Targeting the small
number of children who need assistance seems intuitively preferable, but this may further
isolate or ostracise this vulnerable group. Whole school interventions would be likely to
involve substantial time contributions and cost. Regardless of which approach is favoured,
raising the skills of teachers who will implement these interventions will be important.
Future research is needed to establish whether a shift in these well-being measures is
possible and by which methods (targeted or whole-school) it might best be gained.
CORRESPONDENCE
Nicola Swain-Campbell, Department of Psychological Medicine, Dunedin School of
Medicine, PO Box 913, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. Email: nicola.swain-campbell@
otago.ac.nz.
90 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the schools involved in this study, their administrators, teachers,
parents and children. Therese Hoyle and Liz Ward also made signicant contributions to
the conduct of this survey. Thank you also to Chris Gale for statistical advice.
REFERENCES
Brown, S. & Taylor, K. (2008). Bullying, education and earnings: Evidence from the
national child development study. Economics of Education Review 27, 387-401.
Diener, E., Lucas, R. & Oishi, S. (2005). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness
and life-satisfaction. In C. Snyder & S. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive
psychology. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
Fergusson, D., Swain-Campbell, N.R. & Horwood, J. (2002). Outcomes of leaving school
without formal educational qualications. New Zealand Journal of Educational
Studies, 37(1), 39-55.
Fergusson, D.M., Swain-Campbell, N.R. & Horwood, L.J. (2004). How does childhood
economic disadvantage lead to crime? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
45(5), 956-966.
Fredrickson, B.L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology.
Special Issue: New Directions in Research on Emotion, 2(3), 300-319.
Fredrickson, B.L. & Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of
human ourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 678-686.
Froh, J., Seck, W. & Emmons, R. (2007). Counting blessings in early adolescents: An
experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. Journal of School
Psychology, 46(2), 213-233.
Garner, R. (2008). The anxiety epidemic: Why are children so unhappy? The Independent.
Retrieved 3 December 2008 from: www.independent.co.uk/news/education/
education-news/why-are-children-so-unhappy-794033.html.
Gillham, J.E., Shatté, A.J. & Freres, D.R. (2000). Depression prevention: A review of
cognitive-behavioral and family interventions. Applied & Preventive Psychology,
9, 63-88.
Gilman, R. & Huebner, E.S. (2000). Review of life satisfaction measures for adolescents.
Behaviour Change, 17, 178-205.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. London, UK: Bloomsbury
Publishing PLC.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to
achievement. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge.
Horowitz, J.L. & Garber. J. (2006). The prevention of depressive symptoms in children
and adolescents: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 74(3), 401-405.
Children’s School, Classroom, Social Well-being and Health 91
Huebner, E.S. (1995). The Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale: An assessment of psychometric
properties with black and white elementary school students. Social Indicators
Research 34, 315-323.
Huebner, E.S. & Gilman, R. (2002). An introduction to the multidimensional. Students’
Life Satisfaction Scale. Social Indicators Research, 60, 115-122.
Ivens, J. (2007). The development of a happiness measure for school children. Educational
Psychology in Practice, 23(3), 221-239.
Keyes, C.L.M. (2002). The mental health continuum: from languishing to ourishing in
life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43, 207-222.
Keyes, C.L.M. (2006). Mental health in adolescence: Is America’s youth ourishing?
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76, 395-402.
Lucas, R.E. & Donnellan, M.B. (2007). How stable is happiness? Using the STARTS
model to estimate the stability of satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality,
41, 1091-1098.
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. & Diener, E. (2005). The benets of frequent positive affect:
Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131(6), 803-855.
Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K.M. & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The
architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology. Special Issue:
Positive Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.
Merry, S., McDowell, H., Wild, C.J., Bir, J. & Cunliffe, R. (2004). A randomized placebo-
controlled trial of a school-based depression prevention program. Journal of the
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 43(5), 538-547.
Ministry of Education. (2008). Ministry of Education stand-down and exclusions statistics.
Retrieved 31 July 2008 from: www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/data_cubes/
student_participation/schooling/3720.
Park, N. (2004). The role of subjective well-being in positive youth development. The
Annals of the American Academy, AAPSS, 591(1), 25-39.
Pavot, W. & Diener, E. (2008). The satisfaction with life scale and the emerging construct
of life satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3(2), 137-152.
Peterson, C., Park, N. & Seligman, M.E.P. (2005). Orientations to happiness and life
satisfaction: The full life versus the empty life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6(1),
25-41.
Rutter, M., Giller, H. & Hagel, A. (1998). Antisocial behaviour by young people. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Salovey, P., Caruso, D. & Mayer, J.D. (2004). Emotional intelligence in practice. In P.
Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 447-463). Hoboken,
NJ, USA: Wiley.
Salovey, P. & Mayer, J.D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and
Personality, 9(3).
Seligman, M.E.P. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to
realize your potential for lasting fulllment. New York, NY, USA: Free Press.
92 Nicola Swain-Campbell and Denise Quinlan
Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T.A., Park, N. & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress:
Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.
Shochet, I.M. & Ham, D. (2004). Universal school-based approaches to preventing
adolescent depression: past ndings and future directions of the Resourceful
Adolescent Program. The International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 6(3),
17-25(9).
SPSS: SPSS 16.0 for Windows. Release 16.0.2 (10 April 2008). Stata: Data Analysis and
Statistical Software version 10.1 retrieved 19 March 2009, from www.stata.com/.
Veenhoven, R. (2000). The four qualities of life: Ordering concepts and measures of the
good life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1(1), 1-39.
Veenhoven, R. (2004). Happiness as a public policy aim: The greatest happiness principle.
Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Submitted: 8 March 2009
Revised: 18 June 2009
Accepted: 16 November 2009
... There is increasing interest in the well-being of students at school as well as their academic success (Swain-Campbell and Quinlan 2009). Programmes using strengths to enhance well-being and other outcomes have grown in popularity over the past decade or more (Norrish and Seligman 2015;Proctor et al. 2011a;Proyer et al. 2015;Quinlan et al. 2011) and have been shown to enhance well-being, productivity, engagement and achievement in a range of settings (Flückiger and Grosse Holtforth 2008;Linley et al. 2010b;Seligman et al. 2009). ...
Article
Full-text available
There is increasing interest in students well-being at school. One useful approach to improving school well-being is adopting strengths-based programmes. Many studies use teachers to deliver strengths programmes. However, little is known about how teachers influence the success of these interventions. This possible mediating effect of teachers forms the focus of the present analysis. Ten teachers and their classrooms participated in the study, seven in the intervention group and three in the control group, as part of a larger study. The intervention was delivered by a trained facilitator over 6 weeks and the teachers acted as support during these sessions encouragement to continue between sessions. The strengths intervention was associated with several improved student outcomes. Models showed that the student outcomes that were mediated by changes in teacher strengths spotting were: positive affect, classroom engagement, and need satisfaction (autonomy, competence and relatedness). Student negative affect and strengths use were not mediated by teacher strengths spotting. This finding suggests that programme effectiveness is influenced by contextual variables such as teacher behaviour and attitudes to strengths. Future school programmes might consider the influence of the people who deliver strength intervention programmes—whoever they might be.
Article
Full-text available
The aims of this study were to examine the linkages between leaving school without qualifications and later risks of crime, substance use, welfare dependence and reduced participation in further education/training. The data were gathered over the course of a 21-year study of a birth cohort of 1265 Christchurch-born children. Young people who left school without qualifications were at increased risk of involvement in juvenile crime, substance use, welfare dependence and having reduced participation in further training or education. After adjustment for confounding social, familial and individual factors, associations between leaving school without qualifications and the following factors remained significant: (a) nicotine dependence, (b) being in receipt of a benefit at 21 years, and (c) engaging in no further training or education. Other linkages between leaving school without qualifications and adverse outcomes appeared to reflect the effects of confounding factors. These factors were: gender, standard of living, deviant peer affiliations, child and parental smoking, scholastic abilities, cognitive abilities, suspension from school and truancy.
Article
Full-text available
Published in: "Positive Psychology in Practice", chapter 39, edited by Alex Linley and Stephen Joseph, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken (NJ), 2004
Article
Full-text available
The terms 'quality-of-life', 'wellbeing' and 'happiness' denote different meanings; sometimes they are used as an umbrella term for all of value, and the other times to denote special merits. This paper is about the specific meanings of the terms. It proposes a classification based on two bi-partitions; between life 'chances' and life 'results', and between 'outer' and 'inner' qualities. Together these dichotomies imply four qualities of life: 1) livability of the environment, 2) life-ability of the individual, 3) external utility of life and 4) inner appreciation of life. This fourfold matrix is applied in three ways: firstly to place related notions and alternative classifications, secondly to explore substantive meanings in various measures for quality of life and thirdly to find out whether quality-of-life can be measured comprehensively. This last question is answered in the negative. Current sum-scores make little sense. The most inclusive summary measure is still how long and happily people live.
Chapter
A Four-branch Model of Emotional IntelligenceMeasuring Emotional IntelligencePredicting OutcomesIn PracticeConclusion
Book
This unique and ground-breaking book is the result of 15 years research and synthesises over 800 meta-analyses on the influences on achievement in school-aged students. It builds a story about the power of teachers, feedback, and a model of learning and understanding. The research involves many millions of students and represents the largest ever evidence based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning. Areas covered include the influence of the student, home, school, curricula, teacher, and teaching strategies. A model of teaching and learning is developed based on the notion of visible teaching and visible learning. A major message is that what works best for students is similar to what works best for teachers - an attention to setting challenging learning intentions, being clear about what success means, and an attention to learning strategies for developing conceptual understanding about what teachers and students know and understand. Although the current evidence based fad has turned into a debate about test scores, this book is about using evidence to build and defend a model of teaching and learning. A major contribution is a fascinating benchmark/dashboard for comparing many innovations in teaching and schools.
Article
Comprehensive perspectives on well-being that include positive aspects of human life such as subjective wellbeing have recently been proposed. Life satisfaction is the cognitive component of subjective well-being and plays an important role in positive development as an indicator, a predictor, a mediator/moderator, and an out-come. Whereas low life satisfaction is associated with psychological, social, and behavior problems, high life satisfaction is related to good adaptation and optimal mental health among youth. Life satisfaction and positive affect mitigate the negative effects of stressful life events and work against the development of psychological and behavioral problems among youth. Supportive parenting, engagement in challenging activities, positive life events, and high-quality interactions with significant others contribute to the development of life satisfaction. Further longitudinal research into the mechanisms of how life satisfaction plays its role in positive youth development is needed to promote the psychological wellbeing of all youth.
Article
This chapter reviews the scientific research on subjective well-being. Subjective well-being consists of a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life. First, the authors will provide a brief historical review of research on subjective well-being. Second, they will summarize the main measurement issues (e.g., the validity of self-reports, memory bias). Third, they will present the major theoretical approaches to this area of research (e.g., need and goal satisfaction theories, process or activity theories, genetic and personality predisposition theories). Finally, the authors will review current findings (e.g., hedonic adaptation, the effect of intervention, cultural variation) and suggest future directions for the study of subjective well-being.
Article
Since its introduction in 1985, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 198569. Larsen , RJ , Diener , E and Emmons , RA . 1985. An evaluation of subjective well-being measures. Social Indicators Research, 17: 1–18. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references) has been heavily used as a measure of the life satisfaction component of subjective well-being. Scores on the SWLS have been shown to correlate with measures of mental health and to be predictive of future behaviors such as suicide attempts. In the area of health psychology, the SWLS has been used to examine the subjective quality of life of people experiencing serious health concerns. At a theoretical level, extensive research conducted since the last review (Pavot & Diener, 199389. Pavot , W and Diener , E . 1993. Review of the Satisfaction With Life Scale. Psychological Assessment, 5: 164–172. [CrossRef]View all references) has more clearly articulated the nature of life satisfaction judgments, and the multiple forces that can exert an influence on such judgments. In this review, we examine the evolving views of life satisfaction, offer updated psychometric data for the SWLS, and discuss future issues in the assessment of life satisfaction.