The roles of age, gender, and migration in shaping adolescent student satisfaction within Chilean schools

Abstract

This study has a quantitative cross-sectional design that aims to investigate the relationships between gender, age, status (migrant or Chilean-born), educational satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction among adolescent students in 7th and 8th grades of the Chilean educational system. The sample includes 406 students from four municipal public educational centers located in the Santiago district of the Metropolitan Region of Chile, with at least 20% migrant enrollment. The data were analyzed using quantitative methods using the R language, with descriptive analysis, cross-tabulation analysis, and independence tests. The packages used were: ggplot2, tidyverse and ggstatplot. The study found that age has an impact on the level of satisfaction with education and relationships formed with peers. Specifically, younger students expressed higher levels of satisfaction in these areas compared to older students. Moreover, foreign students showed a statistically significant difference in relation to age range, suggesting that as these students grow older, they tend to become less satisfied with the relationships they form with their classmates. In contrast, no statistically significant difference was found among Chilean students, indicating that the findings discussed here may not be generalizable to this specific population. The analysis also indicates a significant difference in the entire sample, suggesting a correlation between age range and level of satisfaction with schooling.