Gender self-confidence, scholastic stress, life satisfaction, and perceived academic achievement for adolescent New Zealanders.

INTRODUCTION: Confidence in one's gender self-concept has been positively associated with subjective well-being. Further, negative consequences for school life have occurred for adolescents with marginalised gender identities. As a central process variable of subjective well-being, life satisfaction has been positively associated with educational outcomes and inversely associated with stress. Stress, life satisfaction, and academic achievement have been examined in terms of gender, but less is known about their relationship with gender self-concept. Importantly, gender self-concept has been rendered especially vulnerable in adolescence-a time when social self-concept and life satisfaction are reportedly lower than in childhood. METHOD: The current study was conducted with adolescents (N = 1601) from seven secondary schools comprising a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities, in two major New Zealand metropolitan centres. Data were collected via self-report survey. After checking the validity of each measurement model by using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling was performed to explore associations between aspects of gender self-concept, stress, life satisfaction (LS), and perceived academic achievement (PAA). RESULTS: Gender self-definition (GSD; one's self-definition of one's own gender identity) was associated positively with stress, and negatively with perceived academic achievement. Gender self-acceptance (GSA; contentment with one's self-defined gender identity) was negatively associated with stress, and positively associated with LS. Both gender self-acceptance and LS were associated positively with PAA. Two stressors mediated the relationship between LS and both GSD and GSA. CONCLUSION: Implications are suggested for fostering gender-identity safe school environments for adolescents to ensure positive wellbeing and scholastic outcomes.

Adolescent stress, help-seeking intentions, subjective achievement and life satisfaction in New Zealand: Tests of mediation, moderated mediation and moderation.

We present the results of a study examining adolescent help-seeking intentions (HSIs), stress, subjective school achievement and life satisfaction. Using a cross-sectional design with a sample of New Zealand adolescents (n = 1601), we tested whether HSIs could mediate or moderate relations between stress and subjective achievement, and between stress and life satisfaction. We inspected these dynamics alongside different help sources (informal and formal) and domains where stress might be experienced (school and personal). Using mediation testing, findings suggest that informal HSIs have at least some influence on the relations between stress and well-being indicators, whereas formal HSIs did not. Conditional indirect effects for the mediation models (moderated mediation) revealed that gender and age did not moderate the relations between stress and informal HSIs, or between stress and well-being indicators with one exception: gender moderated the relation between personal stress and informal HSIs. In most models, tests of moderation lent support for a protective-reactive model in which HSIs reduce the adverse effects of stress on well-being indicators. Discussion focuses on modelling and promoting help-seeking activities across diverse support sources, and doing so earlier in life so that adolescents can benefit from well-honed coping strategies.