Perceived School Adjustment, Hopelessness, and Well-Being among Adolescents in Hong Kong: A 6-Year Longitudinal Study

Background: The study aims at examining the relationship between perceived school adjustment, sense of hopelessness, and personal well-being indexed by life satisfaction.
Methods: A longitudinal design was adopted. 3,328 Grade 7 students from 28 schools responded to the questionnaire. They were followed up yearly starting 2009-2010 school year. Matched samples were used.
Perceived Academic and School Competence: Three items were used to test participants’ perceptions of their academic and school performance (Shek, 1997). The Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.66 to 0.67.
Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS): The SWLS (Diener et al., 1985) translated into Chinese and validated by Shek (1992) was used to assess the participants’ global judgment on their quality of life. Cronbach’s alpha (five items) ranged from .849 to .879.
Chinese Hopelessness Scale (HOPEL): The Hopelessness Scale (Beck et al., 1974) was translated into Chinese with some modifications to measure the sense of hopelessness in Hong Kong (Shek, 1997). Cronbach’s alpha (five items) ranged from .851 to .883.
Findings: Perceived school performance and life satisfaction decreased and hopelessness increased. Consistent with our predictions, a positive relationship between perceived school performance and life satisfaction, a negative relationship between life satisfaction and hopelessness, and a negative relationship between perceived school performance and hopelessness were found.
Discussion: Structural equation modeling further showed that life satisfaction functioned as a mediator in the relationship between perceived school performance and hopelessness. The findings underscore the role of perceived school performance in adolescent well-being.