Abstract
Preliminary studies of strength-based parenting (SBP), a style of parenting that seeks to build strengths knowledge and strengths use in one’s child, have reported benefits such as higher life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing, and positive emotions together with lower stress in children and teens. Two proximal mediators conveying these effects have been identified: teen’s own use of strengths and strength-based coping, along with a small moderating effect of growth mindsets relating to strengths. The current study tests the potential mediating effect of self-efficacy, a sense of agency in life, in the relationship between SBP and mental health (wellbeing and illbeing) in teens. Self efficacy has been linked to wellbeing and strengths processes in past studies and is classed as a basic human need and form of eudaimonic happiness. This study reconfirmed the adaptive benefits of SBP in a large sample of Australian adolescents (N = 11,368; 59% male; Mage = 14.04, SDage = 1.99) sourced from 28 schools. Using structural equation modeling, SBP significantly and directly predicted higher happiness and lower depression, with direct effects falling into the 85th and 95th percentile of meta-analytically derived individual differences effect sizes. In addition, self-efficacy was a significant partial mediator, accounting for 40.0% of the total effect on happiness and 52.7% of the total effect on distress. Self-efficacy was also a full mediator in the case of anxiety, with a strong indirect effect. Results suggest that building strengths in teens can also build self-efficacy, and given the large effect sizes, that SBP is a promising leverage point for increasing teen wellbeing.
Highlights
(2) Self-efficacy will be related to SBP, distress and happiness, satisfying the general preconditions for mediation
Items in the current study were drawn from a larger comprehensive wellbeing survey, known as the Wellbeing Profiler, that was developed by a team of researchers at the Centre for Positive Psychology, University of Melbourne2
While it is highly likely that schools in the sample differed substantially from one another on a variety of characteristics such as socio-economic status and academic performance, we were unable to asses these factors in the current study due to the strict ethical requirements in handling the larger Wellbeing Profiler data set
Summary
“Inherently, each one of us has the substance within to achieve whatever our goals and dreams define. Studies of a new parenting style focussed on strengths – strength-based parenting (SBP) – have found that it has a significant, positive relationship to wellbeing in teens, partly through building teen’s own strengths knowledge and use (Waters, 2015b; Jach et al, 2017). The authors tested a mediation model, finding evidence that general self-efficacy is a ‘full’ mediator of the connection between leadership strengths and life satisfaction It is currently unclear whether self-efficacy will mediate the relationship between more general strengths processes (i.e., not leadership-specific) and SWB, and whether the promotion of self-efficacy may explain the connections between parental styles that promote strengths processes, and teen wellbeing
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