Monday, 30 October 2017
This exploratory cross-sectional study investigated the effects of life stress, social support, and family hardiness (living environment) on the quality of life, depressive symptoms, and deviant behaviors (life outcomes) among adolescents in the age range of 15 to 19. Quantitative method was employed to estimate the scales of all measurements and their relationships. Data was collected in rural eastern Taiwan. There were 265 teenagers completed all questionnaires in a random sample of 273 adolescents. After examining components of living environment and life outcomes, we found that social support was positively correlated with family hardiness and quality of life, but negatively correlated with life stress, deviant behaviors, and depressive symptoms. Family hardiness was positively correlated with social support and quality of life, but negatively correlated with life stress, deviant behaviors, and depressive symptoms. Life stress was negatively correlated with social support, family hardiness and quality of life; however, it positively correlated with deviant behaviors and depressive symptoms. Therefore, we hypothesized three models to analyze the best fit. By testing three hypotheses in SEM and comparing their goodness-of-fit parameters with our data,, we concluded that family hardiness mediated the effect of living environment (life stress and social support) on adolescents’ quality of life, depressive symptoms, and deviant behaviors. These findings supported the hypothesis that the effects of life stress and social support, the negative and positive components of adolescents’ living environment, respectively, on their life outcomes were mediated by family hardiness, living environment directly influences the adolescents’ life outcomes (quality of life, depressive symptoms, and deviant behaviors), and family hardiness mediated the effects of living environment (life stress and social support) on adolescents’ life outcomes. Life stress was negatively correlated with social support, family hardiness and quality of life, but positively correlated with deviant behaviors and depressive symptoms. Results contributed to knowledge on how adolescents’ life outcomes (quality of life, depressive symptoms, and deviant behaviors) were affected by the living environment (life stress, social support, and family hardiness). To promote adolescents’ welfares, we suggested that the effectiveness of psychosocial and behavioral interventions should develop for increasing adolescents’ quality of life and for reducing depressive symptoms and deviant behaviors.