Social context of school satisfaction among primary and secondary school children in Hong Kong

Abstract

From a socioecological perspective, this study highlights the significance of “context” in school satisfaction research by investigating the role of diverse social contexts in the school satisfaction of children. Using representative primary data from the third wave of the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (Children’s Worlds), this study employs responses from 1525 children (aged 9–14 years) from 17 primary and 16 secondary schools in Hong Kong to examine the effects of school, family, and community sense of belonging (SoB) and autonomy support (AS) and peer relationships (PR) on school satisfaction. All multivariate regression models were estimated in Stata SE 15.1 using cluster-robust standard errors to account for heteroskedasticity across the 33 primary and secondary schools where the 1525 school children were surveyed. Compared with the family, peer, and community contexts, the school context shows a higher bivariate correlation with school satisfaction. However, when the personal characteristics of the school children are controlled for in the multivariate model specifications, school and community AS and community SoB cannot significantly predict school satisfaction. Instead, high school SoB (β = 0.558, p < 0.001), family SoB (β = 0.267, p < 0.001), family AS (β = 0.178, p < 0.001), and PR (β = 0.221, p < 0.001) can significantly predict high perceived school satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature by showing that factors in the microsystem (i.e., school, peers, and family) moderate the effect of the exosystem (i.e., community factors) on school satisfaction, thereby positing the protective role of the microsystem (i.e., school, peers, and family) in children’s school satisfaction against the effects of their exosystem (i.e, community). In the case of Hong Kong, this study suggests that the school environment plays a primary role in promoting children’s school satisfaction, followed by their family and peers.