A probe into the academic life-satisfaction of the school-going adolescents

Abstract

Life satisfaction is the subjective appreciation and enjoyment of one’s overall quality of life, encompassing cognitive evaluations and feelings about various aspects, including global judgments, domain-specific satisfaction, positive affect, and low levels of negative affect. To ascertain the status of academic life satisfaction of school-going adolescents, the present study was carried out through the descriptive survey method by administering the Multidimensional student’s life satisfaction scale (Huebner et al., 1998) on a random sample of 1024 school-going adolescents of South 24 Parganas. The results reflected that life satisfaction derived from family and school was very high; and life satisfaction derived from having friends, living environment and self-satisfaction were high, and life satisfaction in totality was also high. The female school-going adolescents expressed significantly higher life satisfaction in the dimensions of family, friends, school and self, and also in composite multidimensional student’s life satisfaction than the male school-going adolescents. However, no significant gender differences were found in the satisfaction from the living environment. It might be concluded that the school-going adolescents received high educational support, warmth, emotional involvement, responsiveness, care and guidance from parents and social support from their friends, School and living environment.