The Network Structure of Adolescent Well-Being Traits: Results From a Large-Scale Chinese Sample.

Guang Zeng,Chuan-Peng Hu,Kaiping Peng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02783

Abstract

Background: The mental health and well-being of adolescents are becoming increasingly important globally. Understanding the relationship between different aspects of well-being is crucial for effective interventions of the well-being of adolescents. The present study aims to analyze the network structure of adolescent well-being and identify the central well-being traits.Methods: We used a network model to analyze the network structure of a psychometrically sound measurement of adolescent well-being – the engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness (EPOCH) scale. The dataset comes from a representative sample of Chinese adolescents (17, 854 participants from rural and urban areas from Southern, Northern, and the middle part of China).Results: The 20 items of EPOCH formed a highly interconnected network. The item H4 (“I am a cheerful person.”), item E2 (“I get completely absorbed in what I am doing”), and item O4 (“I believe that things will work out, no matter how diffcult they seem”) were the traits with the highest centrality in the network.Conclusions: Cheerfulness, engagement in current activity, and optimism for the future are most central to the psychological well-being of Chinese adolescents. Future studies should further test the dynamics between these central traits and other well-being traits to find effective interventions of well-being of adolescents.

Highlights

Mental health of adolescents is a global concern (Lopez et al, 2006)
To further investigate the generalizability and crosscultural variation of the central features of well-being, the current study extended Stochl et al (2018) in two aspects: (1) we used a representative dataset of Chinese adolescents to examine the generalizability on the central features of well-being in an Eastern culture; (2) we used a different scale of well-being, which is a five-dimensional construct, instead of the one-dimensional structure of Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS)
This study aimed to identify the central aspects of the psychological well-being of adolescents in a representative Chinese sample

Summary

Introduction

Mental health of adolescents is a global concern (Lopez et al, 2006). As mental health problem and well-being are likely to be two ends of a continuum (Caspi et al, 2014; Stochl et al, 2015), improving the well-being of adolescents may help to reduce their mental health problems (Patel et al, 2018).The primary step in improving adolescents’ well-being is understanding adolescents’ wellbeing itself. Keyes (2002) proposed that mental health is a syndrome of well-being symptoms, and mental health is created when a person exhibits high levels of hedonia and eudaimonia symptoms, such as positive functioning in social and emotional life (Keyes, 2009). In particular for young people, Kern et al (2016) proposed the EPOCH model to characterize the well-being of adolescents. This model is comprised of five clusters of positive characteristics: (1) engagement, the capacity to become absorbed in and focused on what one is doing; (2) perseverance, the ability to work hard and pursue one’s goals to the end even when facing obstacles; (3) optimism, i.e., hopefulness and confidence about the future; (4) connectedness, the sense of having a satisfying relationship with others and provide emotional support to others; (5) happiness, being generally happy, fun loving, and content with one’s life. The present study aims to analyze the network structure of adolescent well-being and identify the central well-being traits

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion