When conduct achievement does (and does not) make you smile: it depends on your self-construal

ABSTRACT

A great deal of investigation has been devoted to studying whether academic achievement is linked to adolescents’ life satisfaction, whereas limited studies have focused on conduct achievement, which serves as another common kind of achievement in school. To examine the association between conduct achievement and life satisfaction, two studies were conducted using a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design with a two-phase model. Study 1 (quantitative phase) demonstrated longitudinal evidence for the positive effect of conduct achievement on adolescents’ life satisfaction. Critically, the lagged effect was also moderated by interdependent self-construal, with the beneficial effect becoming stronger for adolescents high in interdependent self-construal. Study 2 (qualitative phase) generated two main themes and four subthemes to understand the meaning and impact of conduct achievement to adolescents. Thematic analysis revealed that conduct achievement was regarded as a partial and subjective assessment by teachers and might elicit a positive perception of the teacher-student relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Conduct achievement
• life satisfaction
• independent self-construal
• interdependent self-construal
• moderation analysis
• mixed-methods design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research involving human participants and/or animals

The present research involved human participants. Informed consent was obtained in advance from all adolescents as well as their parents in written form. The study procedure has been approved by the Human Subjects Ethics Sub-Committee of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Project No.: HSEARS20221125001). The present research did not involve animals.

Notes

1. Previous studies had consistently shown that the Big Five personality traits were associated with life satisfaction (e.g. Lyons et al., 2016; Suldo et al., 2014; Weber & Huebner, 2015). Therefore, we included Big Five personality traits as the covariates to offer a more robust analysis in the present research.

2. Although there is no official banding system for secondary schools in Hong Kong, the school from which we recruited our participants is commonly regarded, albeit unofficially, as a ‘Band 1’ school (out of three bands). This classification is based on its high intake of Band 1 students. Band 1 students represent the top one-third of primary school graduates in terms of academic merit, as determined by the Secondary School Places Allocation (SSPA) System of the Education Bureau in Hong Kong (Education Bureau, 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Internal Research Funds from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [ref: P0046101 and P0041494] and the Mental Health Research Centre of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [ref: P0048889].