Katus, Laura ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4310-2723, Fink, Elian, Wong, Siu-Ching, Xu, Chengyi and Hughes, Claire (2026) Associations between early school wellbeing and mental health in England mainland China and Hong Kong. Child Indicators Research. ISSN 1874-897X (Print), 1874-8988 (Online) (In Press)

PDF (Author's Accepted Manuscript) 54519 KATUS_Associations_Between_Early_School_Wellbeing_And_Mental_Health_(AAM)_2026.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Children’s positive feelings about their school experience play a key role in early socio-emotional and academic development, yet the scarcity of developmentally appropriate self-report measures of school wellbeing has constrained research with young children. Our multi-informant study capitalised on the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS, Allen et al., 2018) measure to examine early school wellbeing in 1,181 children (M age = 5.25 years, SD = 0.53; 49.7% girls) across three culturally and educationally distinct contexts: England, Hong Kong special administrative region (SAR), and mainland China. Across sites, child and parent ratings of school wellbeing showed small but consistent associations with each other, and parent-rated school wellbeing was consistently negatively associated with parent-rated mental health. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to demonstrate that child- and parent-reported school wellbeing scores both showed partial scalar invariance across all three sites, supporting the conceptual equivalence of these school wellbeing measures across geographic contexts. Latent mean comparisons revealed no significant site differences in either child- or parent-rated school wellbeing. These findings provide robust evidence that young children’s self-reported school wellbeing can be meaningfully compared across diverse geographic contexts and highlight the importance of incorporating children’s own perspectives when assessing early school experiences.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	school wellbeing, school enjoyment, cross-cultural, mental health
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology L Education > L Education (General) R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development > Centre for Vulnerable Children and Families Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Last Modified:	29 Sep 2026 16:04
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/54519

Actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads