Explaining the Difference in Adolescent Well-Being Between the Netherlands and Poland Through Social Support and School Work Pressure

Abstract

Well-being of teenagers differs per country and it is unclear what causes this. The goal of this study was to identify differences in social support and school work pressure to explain the difference in well-being between the Netherlands and Poland. We used a representative sample of teenagers (Mage = 13.6) from the Netherlands and Poland (N = 9824) of the HBSC 2018 database for this cross-sectional study. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to predict life satisfaction and psychosomatic complaints from social support from family, social support from friends and school work pressure. These models predicted well-being well with social support from family being the strongest predictor for life satisfaction and school work pressure the strongest predictor for psychosomatic complaints in both countries. Life satisfaction, social support from family and social support from friends are found to be significantly higher in the Netherlands compared to Poland. The strong association between social support from family and life satisfaction and the fact that they are both higher in the Netherlands compared to Poland suggests that social support from family explains the difference in life satisfaction. Interestingly, the biggest difference was found in friend support, being much higher in the Netherlands compared to Poland.