Students Who Like and Dislike School

The major goal of this study was to investigate relationships among levels of 341 secondary school students’ school satisfaction and various intrapersonal, interpersonal, and academic measures. The measures included the School subscale from the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1994), Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1991), Children’s Hope Scale (Snyder et al. 1997), Behavioral Assessment System for Children (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992), self-perceived grade point average (GPA) and participation in extracurricular activities (SEAs). Students were placed into three groups based on their school satisfaction reports, including very low (lowest 20%), average (middle 30%), and very high (highest 20%) levels of school satisfaction. Students with very low school satisfaction differed from students with very high school satisfaction on all adjustment measures; students with very low school satisfaction also differed from students with average levels of school satisfaction on all measures, except the self-esteem measure. Relative to students reporting average levels of school satisfaction, students reporting very high satisfaction demonstrated significantly higher scores on measures of global life satisfaction, hope, internal locus of control, and GPA. Finally, only three students in the very high satisfaction group and nine students in the average satisfaction group reported clinical levels of psychological symptoms. In the very low satisfaction group, clinical levels of symptoms were reported by 30%, 22%, and 16% of the students on the Clinical Maladjustment, Personal Adjustment, and Emotional Symptoms Index, respectively. Implications for future research and educational practices are discussed.