First Report on the Development of Chinese Adolescents’ Social and Emotional Skills: Based on the Second Round of SSES Data

doi:10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.05.001

Abstract

Abstract:

This report analyzes data from the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills for the 10- and 15-year-old groups of students in Jinan City, China, and finds that students in the 10-year-old group scored higher than students in the 15-year-old group in all 16 social and emotional skills. In the 10-year-old group, boys scored higher than girls in all social and emotional skills except responsibility and achievement motivation, where the top three skills with the greatest differences were curiosity, creativity, and emotional control. In the 15-year-old group, girls scored higher than boys on responsibility, empathy, and tolerance, with empathy being the top one with the largest difference. Boys scored higher than girls in all other social and emotional skills, with the top three skills with the greatest differences being stress resistance, emotional control, and curiosity. The social and emotional skills of the advantaged students were higher than those of the disadvantaged group. There is no significant difference in social and emotional skills between general secondary school students and vocational secondary school students. In the 15-year-old group, private school students were slightly higher than public school students in engaging with the others and open-mindedness, while the results were reversed in other skills. Optimism was by far the skill most closely related to health behaviors, body image, life satisfaction, satisfaction with relationships, and current psychological well-being. Emotional control and stress resistance were most closely related to students’ test and class anxiety. Task performance, especially achievement motivation and perseverance, as well as curiosity were strongly associated with better student performance in Chinese, Math, and Arts. Notably, 15-year-old girls benefited more than boys from social and emotional skills, while 10-year-old boys benefited more than girls from social and emotional skills. The relationships between body image, health behaviors, satisfaction with relationships, current psychological well-being, and most of the skills were stronger for advantaged than that for disadvantaged students. Advantaged students tended to participate in more career development activities than disadvantaged students. Students with higher social and emotional skills, especially those with higher levels of creativity and curiosity, engaged in more career development activities. Girls and advantaged pupils tend to be more ambitious about their future education and careers than boys and disadvantaged pupils. Students with high levels of open-mindedness and task performance have higher future educational aspirations and career ambitions.

Key words: Chinese adolescence, social and emotional skills, development level, life satisfaction

Zhenguo Yuan, Zhongjing Huang, Hong Wang, Xiangyu Wang, Jing Zhang. First Report on the Development of Chinese Adolescents’ Social and Emotional Skills: Based on the Second Round of SSES Data[J]. Journal of East China Normal University(Educational Sciences), 2024, 42(5): 1-32.

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