Sense of Community Mediates the Relationship Between Social and Community Variables on Adolescent Life Satisfaction

Abstract

The study of subjective well-being in adolescence has had a recent and dynamic development. Despite this, the meso-systemic contextual factors and their relationship with well-being have had relatively little attention compared to the micro-social dimensions. Regarding this context, this chapter aims to examine the association between life satisfaction with social-communitarian dimensions, and specifically the role that the sense of community plays in Chilean adolescents. Here, we provide a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between sub-jective well-being in childhood and adolescence with a focus on Sense of Community, Social Well-Being, and Community Support variables. Next, we analyze the relationship between subjective well-being scales together with ana-lyzing the role of the sense of community in mediating overall life satisfaction and its relationship with community support and social well-being. The analysis uses the Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS) (Huebner 1991), Sense of Community Scale (Sánchez 2001), the Social Well-being Scale (Keyes 1998), and Perceived Community Support Questionnaire (PCSQ; Herrero and Gracia 2007). The target population studied in this chapter is based on a convenience sample of 438 ado-lescents of both sexes, aged between 14 and 18, belonging to public schools, subsidized private schools, and private schools distributed among seven urban neighborhoods in three regions of Chile. The results indicate that the sense of