Life satisfaction and positive youth development in Serbia

Abstract

Life satisfaction is closely related to emotional, behavioural, social, and environmental youth functioning. Starting from the hypothesis that positive youth development (PYD) qualities such as aspects of eudaimonic well-being lead to higher youth life satisfaction (the hedonic aspect of well-being), we explored predictions of Serbian youth life satisfaction based on the Five Cs on a sample of 215 Belgrade secondary school students (34.9% male students). The research results show that: the youth were mostly satisfied with their friends, their living environment, themselves, and their families, and least satisfied with their school; the Five Cs variables explain the highest percentage of variance in youth satisfaction with the family, and the lowest for satisfaction with the living environment; higher impacts on domain-specific life satisfaction were observed for connection (self-satisfaction, satisfaction with the family and school), confidence (satisfaction with the family and school), and caring (satisfaction with the living environment, school and friends), while competence only predicted self-safisfaction. Providing support for PYD promotion leads to greater satisfaction with different aspects of youth development ecology.