1. Adolescent well-being subjective indicators of relationships in a Romanian and Spanish adolescent sample. Sergiu B ă lţ ă tescu*, Ferran Casas**, Adrian Hatos*, Irma Bertran**, and Mònica González** *Department of Sociology and Social Work. University of Oradea (Romania) **Research Institute on Quality of Life. Universitat de Girona (Spain) Thirs ISCI conference, York July 26-29, 2011

2. Relationships Of most importance throughout life Critical in childhood and adolescence The meaning, intensity and scope of relationship is changing with developmental stages In adolescence, peer relationship become salient while influence of parents is lowering Unselective peer-group relationships give way to the selective personal relationships, then with relationship with adolescents from another sex There is an emotional (romantic) life without a proper relationship

3. General model Domain satisfactions (relationships) School peers Friends Teachers Parents Overall satisfaction with relationships personal relationship in general satisfaction with sentimental life Subjective well-being Life satisfaction Personal Wellbeing Index

4. Method  Spain  Two-stage cluster sample (Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) Centres/classes).  Four provinces of Catalonia.  N=1945  Romania N=930 Bihor county Stratified sample of the urban high-school population

5. Questionnaire  The Personal Well-Being Index (PWI) scale (Cummins, 2003; Cummins et al., 2003), 7 items version  Satisfaction with relationship with:  peers  friends  teachers  parents  Overall satisfaction with relationships (included in Personal Wellbeing Index).  Satisfaction with emotional life  A single item on overall life satisfaction (OLS).  Several items on satisfaction with other aspects of life and life domains, including a set of school-related items. All are measured on an 11-points scale (0 to 10)

6. Sample

7. Results: Personal well-being Index (from: Casas, Baltatescu at al. 2009) Means RomaniaSpain boysgirlsboysgirls With your health8,68,18,48,3 With your standard of living8,78,68,48,3 With what you have achieved in life7,97,8 With how safe you feel8,58,67,77,3 With groups of people you belong to8,48,78,38,5 With your future security8,48,57,47,2 With your personal relationships8,48,58,18,2 With your sentimental life 8,2 7,17,0 PWI-784,684,280,479,9 With your overall life8,99,08,18,0 Note: Standard errors for all computed coefficients, except PWI are less than 0,1. For PWI the standard errors vary between 0,44 and 0,82.

8. Results relationship items Means RomaniaSpain boysgirlsboysgirls With your personal relationships8,48,58,18,2 With the relationship with school peers7,87,98,08,2 With the relationship with teachers7,38,06,97,3 With your sentimental life8,2 7,17,0 With your family relationships9,0 8,38,1 With your relationships with your friends8,78,88,68,8

10. Satisfaction with personal relationships by age & gender

12. Comparisons Relationships with friends highest Relationships with professors - the lowest Romania: family relationship – very high Spain: sentimental life – very low

13. Evaluation of the possibility of the inclusion of a new PWI item Item: satisfaction with sentimental life Motivation: The sentimental life = the affective experiences associated with the romantic relations. Useless to stress the importance of this domain for adolescents. None of PWI items capture these domains. The “personal relations” too general to capture the romantic relationships. Often in adolescence and youth the romantic emotions are consumed outside a (more or less stable) relationship.

14. Factorial structure RomaniaSpain

15. Unique contribution of domains to life as a whole Romania (7 items) R 2 =0,385Romania (7+1 items) R 2 =0,405

16. Unique contribution of domains to life as a whole Spain (7 items) R 2 =0,370Spain (7+1 items) R 2 =0,398

17. Evaluation of the possibility of the inclusion of a new PWI item: pros & cons Pro’s The item loads on the same factor as life as a whole and the other PWI items With β=.17-.18, the item would be among the most important predictors of the life as a whole The item slightly increase the capacity of the Index to predict the levels of life as a whole. Con’s The item would steal a part of the variation from the satisfaction with personal relationships, an item from the same conceptual domain.