School Related Social Support and Adolescents' School Related Subjective Well Being: The Mediating Role of Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction at School
Grounded in Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT; Deci and Ryan in Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. Plenum, New York, 1985; Psychol Inq 11(4):227 268. doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01, 2000; Ryan and Deci in Am Psychol 55(1):68 78. doi:10.1037/0003 066X.55.1.68, 2000) the present study mainly aimed to (1) test a theoretically based model proposing that the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs at school mediates the relationship between school related social support (i.e. teacher support and classmate support) and school related subjective well being and (2) explore the invariance of the model across gender and age groups. A total of 1476 Chinese adolescents (males 712; early adolescents 676; Mage 15.40) completed a multi measure questionnaire tapping the targeted variables. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypotheses. Results indicated that school related social support (i.e. teacher support and classmate support) related statistically significantly to adolescents' school related subjective well being. Furthermore, a multiple mediators analysis indicated that autonomy, competence and relatedness needs satisfaction at school partially mediated the relation between teacher support and school related subjective well being, and fully mediated the relation between classmate support and school related subjective well being. Lastly, the results supported partial invariance of the model with respect to gender and age groups. Limitations of the study are considered and applied considerations to improve adolescents' school related subjective well being are discussed.