Abstract Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, school lockdowns and distance learning were implemented to varying degrees across countries. This study examined the associations between 15-year-olds’ school experience and life satisfaction, and whether life satisfaction is also related to gender, socioeconomic position, and the extent of school closures. Method Data from 86. 007 adolescents in 41 countries participating in the 2021/22 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey were linked with data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Classmate support, teacher support, and school pressure were indicators of school experience, and life satisfaction was measured with Cantril’s ladder. School closure was operationalised as the average closure score per country from the onset of the pandemic to the month before data collection. Multiple linear regressions and multilevel regression analyses were conducted. Result Life satisfaction was negatively associated with school pressure and positively associated with teacher and classmate support. These associations were consistent across countries, although their strength varied. School closure measures were not significantly associated with life satisfaction. A random slope for school pressure (τ11 = 0.02) indicated cross-national variation. The positive correlation between intercept and slope (ρ01 = 0.28) suggests that countries with higher average life satisfaction tend to show a weaker negative association between school pressure and life satisfaction. Conclusion The association between school experience and life satisfaction was evident across all countries, although the strength of the association varied. However, variation in this association was not explained by differences in the extent of school closures.
Löfstedt et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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