In all of my classes i am now only reading primary source research articles from journals that have been peer reviewed. At first I didn't know what to make of it as reading a textbook can be boring but some articles can be pretty tricky. After some practice, I think I actually prefer the articles.
I've chosen to read out of the Journal of Happiness Studies for the remainder of the semester.
Today's article: How do High School Youths' Educational Experiences Relate to Well-Being? Towards a Trans-Disciplinary Conceptualization
I chose this article because I have been working with youth ever since High School when I started volunteering with Middle School students. I have always viewed adolescence as something that could be very positive, as I feel like it was for my life, but all too often it is viewed very negatively and as a period of life to be fixed.
One thing I like about this article is that it combines theory from several disciplines to give a framework within to work to view youth as good instead of viewing them as a problem. On top of the multi-disciplinary approach, it organizes the research into seven testable areas all in relation to well-being. The seven are as follows: having, being, relating, thinking, feeling, functioning, and striving. To help conceptualize these seven items without reading the entire article, you can fill in this basic sentence "how does well-being relate to how one ..." thinks.
To inform you further (and not bore you) I will focus on one of the seven topics and go into more depth about what the research argues. I find this to be particularly applicable to college students, so I will focus on the functioning aspect of well being. The questions posed asks how well being relates to how one spends their time. One focus of study was how an individual spends his/her time and it was found that participating in structured activities chosen on his/her own not only develop social relationships but also several other qualities such as initiative. Another focus of the research was regarding the quality of time spent. It is critical to understand the role of choice in the presence of a teen being at a given location. Involvement is not simply enough, the teen must want to be there and want to go consistently for there to be any positive results.
One practical application of this idea has to deal with teens going to church youth group. Some parents believe that regardless of the teen's interest that they should go and at least be involved. Other parents don't want to force their kids to be there if they aren't interested. Having grown up in the Bible Belt myself, I can easily recall people who were at youth group because they had to and others because they wanted to and how drastically different their experience was.
Soutter, A., Gilmore, A., Steen, B. 2010. How do High School Youths' Educational Experiences Relate to Well-Being? Towards a Trans-Disciplinary Conceptualization. Journal of Happiness Studies
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