Explaining the Effect of Family Status on the Comprehensive Well-being of Students Based on the Mediation Role of Academic Motivation

As demonstrated in prior research, an individual’s response to adverse events is influenced by family context, such that the impact of cumulative adversity on individual health and well–being may vary depending on the level of family functioning. Self–determination theory (SDT) is a theory of human motivation that examines a wide range of phenomena across gender, culture, age, family, and socioeconomic status. Overall, motivational, learning, and educational problems and inadequate family environments make people at risk for health and well–being. The purpose of this study was to explain the effect of family status on the comprehensive well–being of students based on the mediation role of academic motivation.

The study method was a descriptive correlational type and the statistic population of this study consisted of all students from Islamic Azad University of Tehran units in the academic year 2016–2017 which 315 of them were selected by multi–stage sampling method. The study tools were comprehensive scale of well–being (Keyes et al. 2002), academic motivation scale (Vallerand et al. 1992) and family inventory (Beavers et al. 1985). To analyze the data, structural equation modeling, Amos software, maximum likelihood and the significant level of 0.05 were used.

The internal academic motivation mediates the effect of the family status on the comprehensive well–being positively (p<0.001, β=0.2109) and external academic motivation mediate the effect of the family status on the comprehensive well–being negatively (p<0.001, β=–0.534).

According to the findings of this study, it seems individuals with adequate family status have more opportunities and possibilities for autonomy, self–expressiveness, self–awareness, and autonomy, which these psychological structures are internal motivational indicators and affect the individualchr('39')s academic performance and comprehensive well–being.