Individual and Contextual Determinants of Primary and Early Secondary School Students’ School Well-being: A Discriminant Analysis and Cross-lagged Panel Model Approach

Previous studies have explored links between students’ school well-being and their performance, motivation, and emotions, but have only rarely identified the specific factors that characterize students with particularly high or low well-being in school. This study aims to help narrow this research gap by: (1) identifying those individual and contextual factors that contribute to particularly high or low levels of students’ well-being at school; and (2) drawing some causal conclusions of special interest to educators and stakeholders. In this context, two samples of primary and lower secondary school students (Sample 1: 635, Sample 2: 118 respectively) were asked via a questionnaire about contextual factors (perceived autonomy support and perceived competence support) and individual factors (school-related helplessness, gender, immigration background, need for additional support, and the emotion regulation strategies ‘reappraisal’ and ‘suppression’). The questionnaire was administered to Sample 1 at one point of time and Sample 2 at two separate time points (t1 and t2). The results of the MANOVA and discriminant analysis (Sample 1, cross-sectional) indicate that students’ well-being at school is determined primarily by their levels of school-related helplessness, their suppression of emotions, and their perceptions of autonomy and competence support provided by their teachers. The cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) (Sample 2, longitudinal) supports the fact that the use of the emotion regulation strategy ‘suppression’, in particular, inhibits the development of a high level of well-being at the beginning of the school year. These findings are especially relevant, as they demonstrate the possibility of utilizing data collected for purposes other than assessing students’ school well-being, to address related questions.