Orientations to Happiness and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents

Ying Yang, Peipei Li and Yu Kou ()
Additional contact information
Ying Yang: Beijing Normal University
Peipei Li: Beijing Normal University
Yu Kou: Beijing Normal University

Child Indicators Research, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, No 1, 897 pages

Abstract: Abstract The present study investigated Chinese adolescents’ use of orientations to happiness (i.e., meaning and pleasure), and examined the relationships between orientations to happiness and subjective well-being. A total of 2082 Chinese adolescents in 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grades (43 % boys; M age = 15.32, SD = 1.96) participated in the study. The results showed that Chinese adolescents used pleasure and meaning to a similar extent, and no gender differences were found in either orientation. Adolescents’ use of both orientations increased from 7th to 8th grade and did not change from 8th to 11th grade. Both orientations to happiness contributed to adolescents’ subjective well-being, but meaning was a stronger contributor than pleasure. Adolescents with a full life (using both orientations) enjoyed the greatest subjective well-being; adolescents with a meaningful life (using only the meaning orientation) enjoyed the second highest level of subjective well-being; adolescents with a pleasurable life (using only the pleasure orientation) reported the third highest level of subjective well-being; adolescents with an empty life (using neither meaning nor pleasure) reported the lowest well-being. Additionally, we revealed the distribution of the four life types in Chinese adolescents. The proportion of empty life in Chinese adolescents was larger than that in adults.

Keywords: Chinese adolescents; Orientations to happiness; Subjective well-being; Full life (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-016-9410-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:10:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s12187-016-9410-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-016-9410-2

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().