Analysis of the Relationship Between Psychological Well-Being and Decision Making in Adolescent Students

Abstract

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Adolescents are frequently faced with situations in which they have to make decisions by choosing from a range of possible alternatives. In such circumstances, individual, social, and environmental conditions have an impact on the choice of the final decision in light of the various options presented. The main objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between the psychological well-being of adolescent students and their decision-making style. The research method used corresponds to an ex post facto, quantitative, transversal, correlational, and descriptive design, with an initial sample of 1,262 students from the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Spain, aged 13–19. A subsequent resampling of 385 participants was extracted from the initial sample by proportional allocation to strata (according to the levels of the variables gender, academic year, and educational institution classification) to guarantee the representativeness of the population data. Data collection uses the first Spanish adaptation of Ryff's Psychological well-being Scale and the Flinders Adolescent Decision Making Questionnaire, adapted by Friedman and Mann. The data shows that greater use of adaptive decision-making strategies correlates significantly with greater psychological well-being. In contrast, the correlation is high and negative at the intersection of the maladaptive decision-making variables and psychological well-being.

Keywords

• psychological well-being
• decision-making
• adolescents
• gender
• adaptive strategies
• maladaptive strategies