AUTHOR=Zeng Guang , Peng Kaiping , Hu Chuan-Peng 

TITLE=The Network Structure of Adolescent Well-Being Traits: Results From a Large-Scale Chinese Sample

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02783

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02783

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> The mental health and well-being of adolescents are becoming increasingly important globally. Understanding the relationship between different aspects of well-being is crucial for effective interventions of the well-being of adolescents. The present study aims to analyze the network structure of adolescent well-being and identify the central well-being traits.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> We used a network model to analyze the network structure of a psychometrically sound measurement of adolescent well-being – the engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness (EPOCH) scale. The dataset comes from a representative sample of Chinese adolescents (17, 854 participants from rural and urban areas from Southern, Northern, and the middle part of China).</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> The 20 items of EPOCH formed a highly interconnected network. The item H4 (“I am a cheerful person.”), item E2 (“I get completely absorbed in what I am doing”), and item O4 (“I believe that things will work out, no matter how diffcult they seem”) were the traits with the highest centrality in the network.</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> Cheerfulness, engagement in current activity, and optimism for the future are most central to the psychological well-being of Chinese adolescents. Future studies should further test the dynamics between these central traits and other well-being traits to find effective interventions of well-being of adolescents.</p>