Youth Life Satisfaction: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

A central construct within the positive psychology literature is life satisfaction. Whereas adult life satisfaction has been studied extensively, the life satisfaction of children and adolescents has only received attention more recently. This article provides a review of the extant research on youth life satisfaction. Empirical studies (n = 141) on life satisfaction among youth are reviewed. The review details how life satisfaction among youth relates to various other important emotional, social, and behavioural constructs. Evidenced by the review are the conditions that foster positive life satisfaction and the implications of positive life satisfaction among youth. Future directions in life satisfaction research among youth are briefly discussed.Keywords Life satisfaction Á Adolescent Á Children Á Subjective well-being Á Happiness Á Review Recently the burgeoning field of positive psychology has re-illuminated the need for psychology to address areas associated with optimal functioning and happiness. From the time of Aristotle (1925), the pursuit of happiness and the achievement of the 'good life' has been a major concern among philosophers and theologians, and was included as a foundational mission of psychology (Seligman 2002b;Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Within the field of psychology the study of 'happiness' generally falls under investigations of subjective well-being (SWB) (see Diener 1984;Diener 1994;Diener et al. 1999, for reviews). The SWB construct is a tripartite category of phenomena, which includes: emotional responses (i.e. positive affect (e.g. joy, optimism) and negative affect (e.g. sadness, anger)), domain satisfactions (e.g. work satisfaction, relationship satisfaction), and global judgements of life satisfaction (LS) (Diener et al. 1999). In the research literature the components of SWB are often used interchangeably with each other and considered synonymous with term 'happiness' (Diener 1994;Seligman 2002a); despite that the term

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