Investigating the effects of Psycho-Behavioral interventions on healthy adolescents’ subjective well-being: a three-level meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

To summarize the types and effects of psycho-behavioral interventions for improving healthy adolescents’ subjective well-being (SWB) and analyze the influencing factors, this three-level meta-analysis reviewed studies that measured SWB as outcomes. According to 45 studies, we categorized the interventions into 4 categories: physical activity/health behavior interventions, psychosocial skills interventions (fostering positive characters), psychosocial skills interventions (teaching coping skills), and mixed-type interventions. Most studies were compromised by a weak research design regarding random sequence generation, blinding, and selective reporting. The effect sizes of interventions were low at both post-intervention (Hedges’ g = 0.10) and follow-up (Hedges’ g = 0.02) for positive SWB measures. They were also low at both post-intervention (Hedges’ g = −0.02) and follow-up (Hedges’ g = −0.12) for negative SWB measures. A group-based delivery mode and a longer intervention duration predicted higher effects. These findings call for improving research design in future research and diversifying the intervention approaches. (150 words)

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent
• subjective well-being
• intervention
• three-level meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available online. https://osf.io/nxw46/

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2179934

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.