Wellbeing in schools is often focused at the individual level, exploring students' or teachers' individual traits, habits, or actions that influence wellbeing. However, studies rarely take a ...whole-school approach that includes staff wellbeing, and frequently ignore relational and organizational level variables. We take a systems informed positive psychology approach and argue that it is essential to build greater understanding about organizational and relational influences on wellbeing in order for schools to support educator wellbeing. Our study evaluated the relative contributions of individual, relational, and organizational factors to educator wellbeing. Our measure of wellbeing focused on the life satisfaction and flourishing of 559 educators in 12 New Zealand schools. We used a social network analysis approach to capture educators' relational ties, and demographic data and psychometric scales to capture individual and organizational level variables. Results of hierarchical blockwise regressions showed that individual, relational, and organizational factors were all significantly associated with educator wellbeing; however, it was educators' perceptions of trusting and collaborative school conditions that were most strongly associated with their wellbeing. The number of relational ties educators had explained the least amount of variance in wellbeing. Educators were more likely to experience high levels of support when their close contacts also experienced high levels of support. However, for many educators, there was a negative association between their most frequent relational ties and their reported levels of support. Our results suggest that attending to the organizational factors that influence wellbeing, through creating trusting and collaborative school conditions, may be one of the most influential approaches to enhancing educator wellbeing. We call for whole-school approaches to wellbeing that not only consider how to support and enhance the wellbeing of school staff as well as students, but also view the conditions created within a school as a key driver of wellbeing within schools.
Teaching often is listed as one of the most stressful professions and being a language teacher triggers its own unique challenges. Responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have created a long list of new ...stressors for teachers to deal with, including problems caused by the emergency conversion to online language teaching. This article examines the stress and coping responses of an international sample of over 600 language teachers who responded to an online survey in April 2020. The survey measured stressors and 14 coping strategies grouped into two types, approach and avoidant. Substantial levels of stress were reported by teachers. Correlations show that positive psychological outcomes (wellbeing, health, happiness, resilience, and growth during trauma) correlated positively with approach coping and negatively with avoidant coping. Avoidant coping, however, consistently correlated (rs between 0.42 and 0.54) only with the negative outcomes (stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, and loneliness). In addition, ANOVA showed that although approach coping was consistently used across stress groups, avoidant coping increased as stress increased suggesting that there may be a cost to using avoidant coping strategies. Stepwise regression analyses using the 14 specific coping strategies showed a complex pattern of coping. Suggestions for avoiding avoidance coping strategies are offered.
With the increasing importance of the internet to our everyday lives, questions are rightly being asked about how its' use affects our wellbeing. It is important to be able to effectively measure the ...effects of the online context, as it allows us to assess the impact of specific online contexts on wellbeing that may not apply to offline wellbeing. This paper describes a scoping review of English language, peer-reviewed articles published in MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsychInfo between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2019 to identify what measures are used to assess subjective wellbeing and in particular to identify any measures used in the online context. Two hundred forty studies were identified; 160 studies were removed by abstract screening, and 17 studies were removed by full-text screening, leaving 63 included studies. Fifty-six subjective wellbeing scales were identified with 18 excluded and 38 included for further analysis. Only one study was identified researching online wellbeing, and no specific online wellbeing scale was found. Therefore, common features of the existing scales, such as the number and type of questions, are compared to offer recommendations for building an online wellbeing scale. Such a scale is recommended to be between 3 and 20 questions, using mainly 5-point Likert or Likert-like scales to measure at least positive and negative affect, and ideally life satisfaction, and to use mainly subjective evaluation. Further research is needed to establish how these findings for the offline world effectively translate into an online measure of wellbeing.
Awareness of climate change can prompt overwhelming emotions that threaten wellbeing such as anger, despair, and anxiety. Neoliberal views of human beings and their mental health strip the individual ...from their social and material context, driving personal dissatisfaction, social isolation, and ecological destruction. In this piece, we contend that advancements in scholarly research on wellbeing offer valuable insights for addressing the challenges posed by the climate crises while respecting human wellbeing. Such frameworks, which include the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) and the GENIAL model, emphasize the interconnected nature of people, communities, and their environment. In turn, they help to lay the groundwork for the development of 'post-growth' societies focused on supporting outcomes such as human wellbeing, social justice, and environmental regeneration. There are a number of different actions that practitioners and even lay individuals can take to promote positive outcomes and effective responses in the face of the climate crisis. These actions, discussed in the concluding sections of the article, aim to foster wellbeing and impactful engagement with the challenges posed by climate change.
Well-being is a complex, multi-dimensional, dynamic, and evolving concept, covering social, economic, health, cultural and spiritual dimensions of human living, and often used synonymously with ...happiness, life satisfaction, prosperity, and quality of life. We review the existing key wellbeing frameworks applied in Australia both for the wider public and Indigenous peoples. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of various applied frameworks, along with a critical analysis of domains or dimensions comprising those frameworks, and to analyse the role of nature in those frameworks.
We conducted a critical analysis of the main frameworks applied in Australia to date to measure the well-being of the mainstream (mainly non-Indigenous) and Indigenous populations. This study is particularly timely given the Australian Government's interest in revising the well-being frameworks as mentioned in the Government "Measuring What Matters" statement.
The existing well-being frameworks in Australia either overlook or hardly consider the role of nature and its services which are important to support human well-being. Likewise, for Indigenous peoples "
(Indigenous clan land) is vital for their well-being as their living is imbued with "Country". The role of nature/"Country" needs to be considered in revising the well-being frameworks, indicators and measures to inform and develop appropriate policies and programs in Australia.
To develop appropriate welfare policies and programs for achieving socio-economic and other wellbeing outcomes, it is essential to evolve and conceptualize wellbeing frameworks (and related indicators and measures) in line with people's contemporary values, particularly considering the role of nature and its services.
In 2 meta-analyses, we examined the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological well-being and tested a number of moderators of that relationship. In Meta-Analysis 1 (328 ...independent effect sizes, N = 144,246), we examined correlational data measuring both perceived discrimination and psychological well-being (e.g., self-esteem, depression, anxiety, psychological distress, life satisfaction). Using a random-effects model, the mean weighted effect size was significantly negative, indicating harm (r = −.23). Effect sizes were larger for disadvantaged groups (r = −.24) compared to advantaged groups (r = −.10), larger for children compared to adults, larger for perceptions of personal discrimination compared to group discrimination, and weaker for racism and sexism compared to other stigmas. The negative relationship was significant across different operationalizations of well-being but was somewhat weaker for positive outcomes (e.g., self-esteem, positive affect) than for negative outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, negative affect). Importantly, the effect size was significantly negative even in longitudinal studies that controlled for prior levels of well-being (r = −.15). In Meta-Analysis 2 (54 independent effect sizes, N = 2,640), we examined experimental data from studies manipulating perceptions of discrimination and measuring well-being. We found that the effect of discrimination on well-being was significantly negative for studies that manipulated general perceptions of discrimination (d = −.25), but effects did not differ from 0 when attributions to discrimination for a specific negative event were compared to personal attributions (d = .06). Overall, results support the idea that the pervasiveness of perceived discrimination is fundamental to its harmful effects on psychological well-being.
This study sought to explore the level of personal wellbeing and identified the determinants of happiness among Indian adolescents and youth. Data were collected from a sample of 495 participants ...(aged 11–23 years) residing in the National Capital Region of Delhi (Delhi-NCR), using the bilingual version (Hindi and English) of the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). Their PWI score was 80.06, indicating high happiness levels in the nonwestern normative PWI range. Domains of
personal relationship
s,
community connectedness
, and
safety
represented high overall wellbeing with the highest mean scores. Multivariate analysis showed that the least happy group on
life as a whole
domain was students aged 19–23 years as compared with the 11–14 and 15–18 years age group. Furthermore, men had higher happiness levels on
personal safety
, while women had higher scores on
life achievement
. The qualitative analysis illustrated the socio-cultural basis of these wellbeing determinants as rooted in the hierarchical social structures and collectivistic cultural orientation.
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