FAMILY FUNCTIONING AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING AMONG ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

Adolescence is associated with the period of storm and stress where adolescent emotional conditions can change quickly. In addition, adolescence is also associated with high demands for achievement. It becomes interesting to examine the happiness in adolescence. In this study, adolescent happiness was measured with subjective well-being (Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002). Among some of the things that affect happiness is family factors. In this study, family factors will be focused on family functioning (Miller, Ryan, Keitner, Bishop, & Epstein, 2000). This study attempted to search the correlation between family functioning and subjective well-being among adolescents. The hypothesis tested was based on assumption that the higher family functioning, the higher subjective wellbeing among adolescents. Adolescents with age range from 12 to 15 years are the subject in this research. Data were collected by three scales, those are subjective well-being scale that adapted from Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Larson, Emmons, & Griffin, 1985) and Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and family functioning scale was adapted from The McMaster Family Assessment Device (Epstein, Baldwin & Bishop, 1983). The collected data were analyzed by product moment analysis. The result of this study indicates that family functioning was significantly related to subjective well-being among adolescents with r value = 0.167 (p < 0.05). The result of this study will be discussed in more detail in the discussion section.