Back to main pageSubjective Well-Being and Socially Risky Behaviours of Youth.
Casas, F., Coenders, G. & Pascual, S.
Casas, F & Saurina, C. (Eds.) Proceedings of the third conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies. Universitat de Girona, Girona (2001): 367-384.
Abstract:
This article examines the relationship between risky behaviour of youth (drug use, risky driving, vandal behaviour, violent confrontation, alcohol abuse and unprotected sex) and subjective well being (satisfaction with educational achievement, quality of education, social class, social contacts and social roles). Confirmatory factor analysis models are fitted on polychoric correlation matrices to relate the satisfaction dimensions with the binary risk variables, while using corrections for indexes of the model fit and tests of significance. A comparison of 5 European urban areas (Barcelona, Genoa, Madrid, Porto and Amsterdam) is made. The correlations between satisfaction with different aspects of life and risky behaviour appear to be mostly weak and non significant in all these 5 urban areas, even if they are disattenuated by the effect of dichotomous measurement and random errors, and thus higher than those obtained with more standard statistical methods. The correlations also appear to be inconsistent across cities, which may be attributable to low statistical power or to inflation of risk due to multiple testing and which raises a warning against hastened interpretation about differences among cities.