Trends in life satisfaction in European and North-American adolescents from 2002 to 2010 in over 30 countries
BACKGROUND:Life satisfaction (LS) is an indicator which is widely used for assessing the perception of a child's feeling about his life. METHODS: LS is assessed in Health Behaviour in School-aged Children via the Cantril ladder with 10 steps indicating the worst and best possible life. This ran...
| Published in: | The European Journal of Public Health |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
| Other Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/2318/1521082 https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckv014 http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/suppl_2/ |
| Summary: | BACKGROUND:Life satisfaction (LS) is an indicator which is widely used for assessing the perception of a child's feeling about his life. METHODS: LS is assessed in Health Behaviour in School-aged Children via the Cantril ladder with 10 steps indicating the worst and best possible life. This range of values (0-10) was dichotomized into 'low' (0-5) vs. 'high' (6-10). Countries, age groups and genders were compared based on the odds ratio (OR) of declaring a higher LS in 2010 with respect to 2002. RESULTS: Analyzing the difference between 2002 and 2010, six countries from Western Europe show decreasing LS: Austria, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland and Greenland. In contrast, a group of Eastern European Countries, that is, Estonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine, show a significant increase in LS. Data on gender and age differences confirm the lower rating of LS in girls and a decreasing rating with age. CONCLUSION: The LS scale appears to be a tool capable of discriminating the level of wellbeing of adolescent population among countries |
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