engleski

Life satisfaction and certain forms of adolescents` activities

Life satisfaction concept has for long been a subject of philosophical speculations. Its wider application has recently been achieved by growing interest in positive psychology. Althought there are numerous theoretical understanding of this concept, there are only a few of its original theories. Diener (1984) has talked about some of these theories, which are in part connected with life satisfaction, and one of them, namely activity theory, represents the starting point of this paper. The activity theory has the original assumptation that a person will be more satisfied if he / she takes part in an interesting activity and that the very inclusion in that activity will provide more satisfaction than actually reaching its goal. Activity in this research means to actively report one`s own demands, thoughts and emotion (assertiveness), the choice of active strategies in coping with stress and physical activity (excercise). The aim of this paper was t oestablish if the more assertive adolescents, the ones who excercise more and who choose to actively cope with stress are indeed more satisfied with their lives. For that purpose, a research has been conducted in the first grade of two secondary schools (N=150). The scales used have been designed in our country and adjusted to the age group of the adolescents: The Life Satisfaction Scale (Penezic, 1996) ; Coping with Stress Scale for Children and Adolescents (Vulic - Prtoric, 2000) and Assertiveness Scale (Mihaljevic, 2005). All of the scales have high and satisfying reliability and validity. In order to obtain the information about adolescents` physical activity, we asked if they were doing sport recreationaly or professionally and if they could name the reason for doing sport together with their opinion about its influence on s person `s health. Results of the research show that the adolescents who are assertive, excercise more and choose active atrategies in coping with stress, such as problem solving, family and frie`s support and cognitive restructuring, are more satisfied with their lives. The results obtained in the research show the need to implement different programmes based on positive psychology principles in secondary schools in order to develop specific social skills. Furthemore, it is also necessary to encourage various activities of adolescenta - mental as well as physical.

adolescents; life satisfaction; assertiveness; coping with stress; excercise

nije evidentirano