Flourishing and its major indicators in school-going Indian adolescents

Abstract

Research on adolescence—the second decade of life—has focused predominantly on adolescent’s negative characteristics, which is not enough to understand the underlying complexities. Therefore, this study emphasizes on adolescent’s flourishing—a positive dimension of mental health continuum—which is a relatively new construct. The main objectives of the study are to assess the level of flourishing in school-going Indian adolescents across two types of school and gender, and to identify its major indicators. The study has explored the occurrence of natural groups among these adolescents using cluster analysis in terms of their flourishing and measured variation between these natural groups on the indicators of flourishing. The study has also attempted to explore the adolescents’ lived experiences to understand the dynamics of their flourishing. On the basis of the review of literature, hypotheses have been formulated to address all the objectives except the last one as it has been addressed by the qualitative research method. The study is based on sequential mixed method design. In the first phase, under the framework of quantitative research design, the study has adopted a prospective, more than one independent variable, factorial design developed under the ex post facto approach. As there are two factors, a 2 (School) x 2 (Gender) factorial design has been adopted. In the second phase, under the framework of qualitative research design, the study is based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis for understanding the process and identifying the dynamics of flourishing in school-going Indian adolescents. The sample comprises of 400 school-going Indian adolescents, who are in their late adolescence phase and selected by multistage sampling. After obtaining the ethical approval of the Institutional Ethics Committee of the University, five measures, such as Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, Modified Differential Emotional Scale, Personal Growth Initiative Scale, Sources of Adolescent’s Happiness Scale, and Big Five Inventory-10 have been administered in smallgroups. In addition to this, individual in-depth interview sessions have been conducted on five flourishing and five languishing participants. The obtained quantitative data have been analysed by means of Mean, SD, 95% Confidence Interval, 2 X 2 Between-subjects ANOVA, Pearson’s r, hierarchical regression analysis, k-means cluster analysis, t-test, and Cohen’s d. In addition to these, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and Cronbach’s alpha have been used to develop Sources of Adolescent’s Happiness Scale. The qualitative data have been analysed by means of data driven thematic analysis. The findings of the study have revealed that the Indian adolescents do not vary in terms of their level of flourishing across school and gender. It is observed that 6.2% participants are flourishing, 83.8% are moderately mentally healthy, and 10% are languishing. The study, however, has identified seven major indicators of adolescent’s flourishing. Cluster analysis has revealed two natural groups (high flourishing and low flourishing) and these two groups have been found to be significantly different from each other in terms of the indicators of flourishing. In addition to this, the study has contributed a specific instrument—SAHAS—to measure the sources of adolescent’s happiness. The findings have also unfolded eight facilitating factors and seven barriers in the form of a functional model of the dynamics of adolescent’s flourishing, which would help in developing intervention programme for fostering flourishing during adolescence, theory generation, and theory verification. Limitations and future direction are discussed along with the implications in terms of assessment and evaluation, intervention, and theory generation and verification