Life satisfaction, self-concept, and relationship with parents in adolescence

The influence of self-concept and relationships with parents and school on life satisfaction of adolescents was explored in 1156 Chinese junior high school children in Hong Kong. Adopting the multidimensional approach, self-concept was measured globally as well as in four specific aspects, namely, academic ability, social ability, physical ability, and physical appearance. Results show that all self-concept measures are correlated with life satisfaction, but the strongest correlation was found between general self-concept and life satisfaction. This pattern is consistent with American findings in that a higher self-concept was related to more life satisfaction, but the correlation obtained was much weaker in the present study. In a series of regression analyses, it was found that relationship with parents dominated the prediction of life satisfaction, and only the social ability component of self-concept was able to account for a small amount of extra variance. Relationship with school was not related to life satisfaction in any significant way. Implications of these results are discussed.