Abstract
This study focuses on Spanish students of post-compulsory secondary education (15- to 24-year-olds) and has the following objectives: (1) to analyse the relationships between satisfaction with present safety and future security and the items conforming the Catalan adaptation of Cummins et al.’s (Soc Indicators Res 64:159–190, 2003) PWI-7 (satisfaction with health, standard of living, life achievements, groups of people you belong to and relationships with other people) and the Overall Life Satisfaction (OLS) scale (for overall life satisfaction); (2) to explore the relationships between present safety and future security and other psychosocial constructs and (3) to identify potential gender differences and similarities between the above variables and relationships.
The results obtained offer some contribution to understanding perceptions of security by first testing its relationship with psychosocial factors such as self-concept, overall sense of meaning in own life, freedom of choice and control over own life, and values aspired to in the future. They also shed some light on quality of life studies by contributing to our understanding of the relationships existing between perceptions of security and personal well-being, an area in which few studies have been conducted and which requires further attention from the scientific community.
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Notes
- 1.
The Australian Unity regularly measures how satisfied Australians are with their lives and life in Australia. The PWI forms part of the Australian Unity Well-being Index.
- 2.
Attachment is a psychological concept which was first defined by Bowlby (1999) with reference to an intensive and long-term bonding which develops and consolidates between two people, through their reciprocal interaction with the aim of providing protection and security.
- 3.
The psychosocial perspective can be understood as the confluence between psychological and social factors and helps to explain, for instance, the influence of others in the way we perceive and evaluate things happening around us.
- 4.
From Rosenberg’s work in 1979, there is agreement among the scientific community that self-concept refers to the self-evaluations that people make about different areas of their lives.
- 5.
In Spain, upper-secondary education (Bachillerato) is offered in secondary schools as well as intermediate specific vocational training. For this reason, all participants in this study were recruited from secondary schools.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through the National Plan of Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation, for this research project with reference SEJ2007–62813/PSIC.
Thanks are also given to Barney Griffiths for the meticulous and hard work done with the translation of this article, and for the clarifications raised to help better explaining our results in English.
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González, M., Casas, F., Figuer, C., Malo, S., Viñas, F. (2012). Satisfaction with Present Safety and Future Security as Components of Personal Well-Being Among Young People: Relationships with Other Psychosocial Constructs. In: Webb, D., Wills-Herrera, E. (eds) Subjective Well-Being and Security. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2278-1_10
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