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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1485289

Development of Subjective Well-Being in Adolescents Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Provisionally accepted
Helene Eckert Helene Eckert *Patrick Paschke Patrick Paschke Linda Wirthwein Linda Wirthwein Ricarda Steinmayr Ricarda Steinmayr
  • Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Previous studies have already revealed detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on school students' subjective well-being (SWB). However, there is a lack of studies examining the development of various facets of SWB such as life satisfaction, mood as well as domain satisfactions regarding peers, family, or school before and during the pandemic among adolescents longitudinally. Furthermore, the present study aims to shed further light on various moderators such as gender, age, migration background and socioeconomic status.Data from N = 207 students (Grade 5 to 9) from two German schools were assessed on four measurement time points, three before and one after the onset of the pandemic. Piecewise latent growth curve models with three time slopes were conducted to investigate the development of SWB and its moderators. They showed significant declines in general mood and domain-specific satisfaction with family, peers and school before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, only satisfaction with family decreased significantly. Among the moderators, especially the socioeconomic status indicated interindividual differences in the variation of different SWB facets.

    Keywords: Subjective well-being, COVID-19, adolescence, Longitudinal, life satisfaction, domain-specific satisfaction

    Received: 01 Oct 2024; Accepted: 20 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Eckert, Paschke, Wirthwein and Steinmayr. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Helene Eckert, Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.