School-Related Predictors of Students’ Life Satisfaction: the Mediating Role of School Belongingness

Abstract

Life satisfaction is considered a cognitive component of subjective well-being and leads to many life outcomes; therefore, psychologists and sociologists need to understand its predictors. Moreover, it has been argued that strengthening students’ life satisfaction is one of the essential missions of education and so the research studies investigating the predictors of this construct among students should focus on variables that can be shaped or modified through interventions. The main goal of this paper was to further elaborate which school-related factors could predict the overall student life satisfaction to the greatest extent. The target population of this research covered all third-grade high school students in Urmia (center of West Azerbaijan Province in Iran). The findings of the study showed that parental involvement in their children’s schooling was directly associated with the life satisfaction of the students. Moreover, sense of fairness and parental involvement was related indirectly to life satisfaction through belonging to school and teacher-student relations had a significant indirect relationship with life satisfaction through sense of fairness and belonging to the school. Based on these findings, understanding relations among parental involvement, sense of fairness, belonging to school, and life satisfaction may provide additional information regarding planning interventions to promote life satisfaction among students.