Exploring physical, subjective and psychological wellbeing profile membership in adolescents: a latent profile analysis

Background Understanding wellbeing in adolescents and within education settings is crucial to supporting young people. However, research defining and exploring wellbeing has typically taken a focus on subjective, psychological, social and emotional domains and has failed to incorporate aspects of physical health and wellbeing. This study aimed to explore how both physical and subjective and psychological wellbeing can be combined to generate different profiles of wellbeing in adolescents, and to understand the characteristics associated with this profile membership.

Methods 366 adolescents aged 11-16yrs (mean age 12.75) from three mainstream secondary schools across England completed an online survey capturing demographic characteristics, physical, subjective and psychological wellbeing, physical activity, emotional literacy, school belonging, and perceptions of learning ability. Latent profile analysis used a data driven approach to explore profiles of wellbeing using physical wellbeing and positive emotional state and positive outlook as predictors of profile membership. To understand profile characteristics demographics, physical activity and educational variables were added as co-variates.

Results Three profiles were identified, (1) low wellbeing (n = 68, 19%) displaying low scores across physical wellbeing, positive emotional state and positive outlook, (2) moderate wellbeing (n = 168, 46%) characterised by average levels across physical wellbeing, positive emotional state and positive outlook, and (3) high wellbeing (n = 128, 35%) showing high score across physical wellbeing, positive emotional state and positive outlook. Compared to the high wellbeing profile, the moderate and low profiles membership was characterised by being older, being a girl, lower perceived socio-economic status, fewer hours of physical activity a week, and lower emotional literacy, school belonging and perceptions of learning.

Conclusions The results evidence that physical, subjective and psychological wellbeing are closely inter-related, this finding coupled with increased physical activity in the higher wellbeing group signify physical health and activity are important components of overall wellbeing and should form part of a holistic approach to school wellbeing curriculums.