The purpose of this study was to develop a model for children's well-being model and examine the effects of perceived parental conflict, maternal behaviors, and social support on school-age children's subjective and psychological well-being. The prese ...
The purpose of this study was to develop a model for children's well-being model and examine the effects of perceived parental conflict, maternal behaviors, and social support on school-age children's subjective and psychological well-being. The present study consisted of two phases: Testing the measurement model and development of structural model.
In total, 1,481 children (M=10.65 years, SD= 1.04) were recruited from nine public elementary schools in Seoul, South Korea. Within the entire sample there were 464 boys and 425 girls from grades 4-6. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, explanatory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling(SEM) using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0.
In the first phase, the measurement model was tested. The measurement model was fit to the data and resulted in the following excellent fit indices: χ2 (21, N=889)= 34.24, χ2/df = 1.63; TLI= .976; CFI= .986; RMSEA= .046. Convergent validity was supported for the measures (p<.001 level). Furthermore, the inter-correlations among the latent variables were all significant (p<.01 level). Specifically, parental conflict was significantly related to the maternal behavior (r= -.55), social support (r= -.41), and well-being (r= -.42); maternal behavior was related to social support (r= .67), and well-being (r= .56); and social support was related to well-being (r= .66). This means that the measurement model had appropriate discriminant validity.
In the second phase, the structural equation model was developed to examine the structural relationships among the perceived parental conflict, maternal behaviors, social support, and children's well-being. The main hypotheses were as follows:
First, children's perceived parental conflict is negatively related to children's well-being. Second, the effect of children's perceived parental conflict is mediated by children's perceived maternal behavior. Third, the effect of children's perceived parental conflict is mediated by the two factors, maternal behavior and social support. Fourth, maternal behavior is positively related to children's well-being. Fifth, the effect of children's perceived maternal behavior is mediated by children's perceived social support. Sixth, children's perceived social support is positively related to children's well-being.
Based on these six hypotheses, this study examined how well empirical data fitted the hypothetical model In order to choose the best-fit model, model modification strategy provided by SEM was utilized. The initial model was selected for satisfying parsimoniousness, fitness, and robustness, compared with the modified model. The final structural equation model was fit to the data and resulted in the following excellent fit indices: χ2 (22, N=889)= 69.40, χ2/df = 3.15; TLI= .970; CFI= .982; RMSEA= .049. And also, the final structural equation model was tested separately for various groups in terms of sociodemographic characteristics such as age and gender to see how robust the model was. The results supported the robustness of the final structural equation model.
The findings show that perceived parental conflict is negatively related to children's well-being, and the relationship is also explained by the mediating factor, perceived social support. However, perceived maternal behavior has no direct effect on children's well-being, but has indirect effects only through the mediating factor, perceived social support. This result provides a counter evidence to the general perception that maternal behavior is the most important variable in children's adjustment. Specifically, higher parental conflict decreases maternal behavior, and poor maternal behavior make children perceive less social support, and less social support decreases children's well-being.