Social-Emotional Health and Psychological Well-Being among Church School Students

Abstract

Introduction: This study aims to determine the level of social-emotional health of church school students and relationships among the variables of social-emotional health and psychological well-being. Methods: The research group consisted of 73 church school students in Presov Region. The data collection tools were the Social – Emotional Health Survey for secondary education (SEHS-S) and the Scale of Psychological Well-Being (PWB). The presented quantitative study has a correlation character with the comparative questions and exploratory - verification design. Results: The findings of the study showed that there is a strong positive correlation between overall social-emotional health referred to covitality and psychological well-being. Strong and moderate correlations were found among domains and psychological indicators of social-emotional health and dimensions of psychological well-being. A domain belief in others strongly correlates with positive relations with others. A strong correlation has been found between the indicator of peer support and the dimension of positive relations with others. The findings showed a moderately large, statistically significant difference in the level of belief in self in favor of males compared to females. Small and medium-sized differences between males and females were also found at the level of psychological indicators. The level of overall social-emotional health increases with the increase in the mastery of the environmental mastering and positive relations with others, which explains 35% of the data variance. Discussion: Research indicates relationships between the social-emotional health and psychological well-being as well as among dimensions, domains and indicators. The results support previous findings of other authors. Furthermore, the results showed a significant difference in the level of belief in self domain in favour of males compared to females. This finding indicates that males have higher self-confidence while compared to females. Limitations: There are certain limitations in the research, which include usage of non-standardized methods on Slovak population and a low level of reliability for Psychological Well-being Scale. Among other limitations, we include the time of data collection, which took place during the last class at the end of the week. Conclusion: Mental Health is about more than mental illness. Being mentally healthy and feeling well is important. To measure and identify elements of mental health may be useful to comprehend and promote psychological strengths of a person. A value of the paper lies in findings concerning social-emotional health of church school students, which contributed to the standardization of SEHS-S in Slovakia. Nevertheless, social-emotional health of Slovak students should not be neglected and further research on a larger sample is needed.