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

Dr Haridhan GoswamiResearcherThe Children’s Society

Conference for the International Society for Child IndicatorsUniversity of York27th to 29th July 2011

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

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

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

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’)

Methods (Cont…)

• Items used for measuring personality

Extraversion Agreeableness

Make friends easily Am interested in people

Start conversations Care about other people’s feelings

Enjoy meeting new people Think of others first

Don’t talk a lot Know how to comfort others

Stay in the background Love to help others

Methods (Cont…)

• Items used for measuring personality

Consciousness Emotional stability

Pay attention to detail Get stressed out easily

Get chores done right away Worry about things

Like to tidy up Change my mood a lot

Do things according to a plan Get irritated easily

Make plans and stick to them Often feel depressed

Methods (Cont…)

• Items used for measuring personality

• Openness

Am interested in new ideas

Use a lot of different words

Am quick to understand things

Am full of ideas

Love to think up new ways of doing things

•Reliability

Cronbach’s alphas: 0.69 extraversion; 0.80 agreeableness; 0.72 conscientiousness; 0.78 emotional stability; 0.79 for openness.

Methods (Cont…)

Methods (Cont…)

Methods (Cont…)

Methods (Cont…)

Methods (Cont…)

Results

• Univariate analysis

Variables Mean / % Variables Mean / %

Year 6 27% Extraversion 13.91

Year 8 45% Agreeableness 14.90

Year 10 28% Conscientiousness 11.63

Female 39% Emotional stability 7.52

Life satisfaction 14.34 Openness 14.33

Results (Cont…)

• Bivariate analysis

Variables Relation SWB Variables Relation SWB

Year 6 .148 ** Extraversion .355 ***

Year 8 .006 Agreeableness .347 ***

Year 10 -.146 ** Conscientiousness .380 ***

Gender (Female) .068 ** Emotional stability .356 ***

Openness .378 ***

** p < .01; *** p < .001

Results (Cont…)

• Multivariate analysis

Independent variables Model 1 Model 2

Std. Beta Sig. Std. Beta Sig.

Year 8 (Ref. Year 6) -.106 .001 -.095 .001

Year 10 (Ref. Year 6) -.213 .000 -.147 .000

Gender (Female) .076 .003 .051 .023

Extraversion .148 .000

Agreeableness .106 .001

Conscientiousness .173 .000

Emotional stability .271 .000

Openness .130 .000

Adjusted R squared .032 .313

F (p value) 17.61 (.000) 86.25 (.000)

N 1495 1495

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.

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.

Limitations & future directions

1. Other demographic factors such as disabilities, learning difficulties, ethnic background, religious affiliation, country of birth, family structure, family economic condition to include

2. Life events to include

3. To look at the impact of personality on various domains of well-being

4. Other aspects of an individual’s personality such as self-esteem, locus of control to include

5. To examine interaction effects of extraversion and emotional stability on SWB

6. To examine interaction effects of gender and personality on SWB