SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING IN RUSSIAN PRIMARY SCHOOLCHILDREN: THE EFFECT OF FAMILY FACTORS

The study aimed to investigate children subjective well-being with the Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS) and its relations to family factors estimated by parents in sample of primary schoolchildren. The study involved 906 children (54% of girls) from six to twelve years (mean age 9 +/- 1.2 years). Family factors included family type, education and profession of parents, financial situation, family cohesion, family violence; parental stress was measured by the short form of SRQ, parenting was evaluated with the short form of the APQ-BF questionnaire; and the child timespending with the family was measured using authors' scales. Most children rated their lives positively; girls' life satisfaction was somewhat higher than boys'; children with two parents scored higher than children from other types of families; however, these effects were less than 1% of variance. Correlation analysis showed that the child subjective well-being is positively related to family cohesion, financial situation, joint activities in public places, involvement of parents in the child's affairs and intrafamily activities and negatively with poor supervision, parental stress and corporal punishment. According to the results of multiple hierarchical regression analysis, the only predictor of child life satisfaction was joint activities in public places.