School–Specific Subjective Wellbeing and Emotional Problems among High School Adolescents

Wellbeing is a broad concept, and includes all manner of healthy and successful human functioning, and comprised of people's both private and public wellbeing experiences. The purpose present study is to investigate the predictive effect of students subjective wellbeing on several specific adolescents' emotional problems, including anxiety, depression, negative self–concept, somatization, and hostility. Participants of the study comprised of 541 high school students attending two public high schools in a small city of Turkey. They were 39.6% female and 60.4% male adolescents, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years (Mean = 16.19, SD = 1.11). Findings from Pearson product-moment correlation analysis indicated small–to–moderate associations between subjective wellbeing and anxiety, depression, negative self–concept, somatization, hostility, and overall emotional problems. Additionally, the path analyses demonstrated the predictive effect of school–specific subjective wellbeing on adolescents' emotional problems, and students with higher level of subjective wellbeing had lower level of anxiety, depression, negative self-concept, somatization, hostility, and overall emotional problems. The results were discussed in context of literature, and several suggestions were presented for research and practice.