The most salient global predictors of adolescents’ subjective Well-Being: parental support, peer support, and anxiety

Abstract

The present study examined the globally relevant predictors of adolescents’ subjective well-being (SWB) using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 Student Questionnaire. Guided by the social-cognitive-behavior model (Suldo et al., 2008) and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), nine variables were selected and subjected to a statistical procedure of decision tree modeling (DTM). Our results showed that parent and peer support were the most salient predictors of adolescents’ SWB across all eight world regions under investigation, followed by anxiety and gender. However, we also noted some variations in the relative importance of parent and peer support and multiple pathways that lead to SWB. The study concludes with practical implications.