Psychosocial factors influencing individual well-being in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong

This pioneer study investigated the longitudinal development of adolescent subjective well-being (SWB) in terms of life satisfaction and hopelessness. The concurrent and longitudinal influence of different socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, economic disadvantage, and family intactness), individual qualities (i.e., resilience, social competence, positive identity, and spirituality), and familial characteristics (i.e., family functioning, and parent-child relationship) on these two aspects of SWB were examined. A total of 3328 Hong Kong students from 28 secondary schools participated in a 6-year longitudinal study. While adolescent life satisfaction showed a declining trend, hopelessness gradually increased across the six years. Resilience, social competence, family functioning, and father-child relational qualities were significant predictors of life satisfaction at the initial status, whereas gender, mother-child relational qualities, positive identity and spirituality predicted changes in life satisfaction over time. Regarding hopelessness, gender, family intactness, resilience, social competence, father-child relational qualities, and mother-child relational qualities were significant correlates at the initial slope, but spirituality and family functioning were the longitudinal predictors of hopelessness over the adolescence period. While the present study showed that some existing Western findings can be replicated in the Chinese context, there are some novel and puzzling observations deserving further scrutiny.

 Life satisfaction: global evaluation of life; stable and essential indicator of personal well-being and psychological development in adolescence [1][2][3][4]  Hopelessness: one's expectation that highly desirable outcomes will not occur. Hopelessness theory -high correlation between hopelessness and symptoms of depression [5]  Adolescents' perception and realization of hope in life is critical in shaping physical and emotional well-being, goal orientation, and avoidance of risk behaviors [6] Literature Review  Findings of adolescents' change in hopelessness: 1. Some studies found that adolescents experienced higher level of hopelessness during transitional period [10][11][12][13] 2. Lester [14] suggested that hopelessness level of adolescents did not increase in recent years  Generalizability issue: small sample size or homogenous sub-sample in existing studies [15]  Insufficient research on assessing the predictors of adolescent life satisfaction and hopelessness

Parent-child Relational Qualities
Father-child Relation Scale (14 Items) Mother-child Relation Scale (14 Items) [57] Chinese Positive Youth Development  1. Resilience, psychosocial competence, family functioning, and father-child relational qualities were significant predictors of initial status, but not significant in linear and quadratic slopes (Table 8) 2. Gender was significant only in initial status and linear change. Males had more life satisfaction in initial assessment, but showed a faster decreasing rate than females (Table 8 & Fig. 2) 3. Mother-child relational qualities was significant only in initial status and linear change (-). Good mother-child relationship showed more life satisfaction than poor mother-child relationship in initial assessment, but had a faster decreasing rate (Table 8 & Fig. 5) 4. Positive identity and spirituality were significant predictors of initial status, linear (-), and quadratic slopes (+). In initial assessment, higher positive identity and spirituality showed more life satisfaction. Life satisfaction for adolescents with higher positive identity/spirituality will drop faster than those with lower positive identity/spirituality (Table 8

Results (Hopelessness: 1)
Correlations: Socio-demographic factors, family attributes, positive youth development attributes, and family process were associated with hopelessness (Table 6)   Significance of predictors: 1. Gender, family intactness, resilience, psychosocial competence, father-child relational qualities, and motherchild relational qualities were significant in initial status, but not significant in linear and quadratic slopes (Table 10) 2. Spirituality was a significant predictor of initial status, linear (+), and quadratic slopes (-). Adolescents with lower spirituality attained higher hopelessness in the beginning. Yet adolescents with higher spirituality would increase hopelessness more. The change was first-drop-then-increase (Table 10 &

General Discussion
 Consistent with some previous literature, adolescents' life satisfaction exhibits a decreasing trend [8][9][10], while their hopelessness level is increasing [10,13]  Adolescents' decreased life satisfaction and increased hopelessness could be explained by the confusions and developmental challenges they face during transitional process, notably the increase of studying pressure/future career decisions and problems engendered by peers or dating. [6,8,10,62]  This study has developed an integrated perspective for measuring different levels of factors that associated with adolescent life satisfaction and hopelessness  Some factors affect initial status (Grade 7), some affect the initial status and the change, even some affect the initial status, the change and the rate of change (   Males had faster decreasing life satisfaction than females, self-understanding (decline of over-optimistic image) and school life (females adapt better at project-based learning) would contribute to the change of life satisfaction  Positive identity and spirituality could be protective factors for the development of life satisfaction, while spirituality and family functioning could be treated as protective factors for the development of hopelessness.
 Contrary to previous literature, this study found that goodmother child relationship showed a faster decrease of life satisfaction in linear change. This might be because maternal over-control or over-protection constrains adolescents' decision-making autonomy and limit their exposure to responsibilities and opportunities, which lead to their increased risk of maladjustment for late adolescence [63][64][65].
The impact may be more pronounced in Chinese families (helicopter parents)