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How is Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status Related to Life Satisfaction in Chinese Adolescents? The Mediating Role of Resilience, Self-Esteem and Hope

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Abstract

This paper aimed at examining the mediators of resilience, self-esteem and hope in the link of subjective family socioeconomic status (SFSS) with life satisfaction in two independent samples of Chinese adolescents. In Study 1, 845 adolescents completed a multi-section questionnaire including the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, Brief Resilience Scale, Rosenberg Self–esteem Scale, Children’s Hope Scale and Satisfaction with Life Scale. The multiple mediation analysis suggested that SFSS could positively predict life satisfaction through three pathways. First, resilience mediated the link of SFSS with life satisfaction. Second, self-esteem mediated the link of SFSS with life satisfaction. Third, hope mediated the link of SFSS with life satisfaction. Moreover, after controlling for age, gender and objective FSS, these findings remained significant. To test whether the above results are stable and replicable, we further conducted a validation study in sample 2 (N = 483) and found all the results remained significant. Together, these findings may provide theoretical evidence for how to enhance life satisfaction with adolescents who have lower SFSS.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2022JQ-155), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK202103131).

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  1. School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710062, China

    Wenjing Yan, Linting Zhang, Wenjie Li & Feng Kong

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  1. Wenjing Yan
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Correspondence to Feng Kong.

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Yan, W., Zhang, L., Li, W. et al. How is Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status Related to Life Satisfaction in Chinese Adolescents? The Mediating Role of Resilience, Self-Esteem and Hope. Child Ind Res 15, 1565–1581 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-022-09936-2

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