Education policy and students' happiness and mental health from a comparative perspective

超过一定水平的GDP增长并不能转化为更大的幸福感（Easterlin 1974, Layard 2006），这一发现在过去四十年中引发了越来越多的学术和政策对幸福感的兴趣（Diener et al. 1999; Diener et al. 2018）。2009年，经济绩效和社会进步衡量委员会极具影响力的报告（Stiglitz 2009）建议，应使用社会福利指标评估社会进步。从那时起，许多国家的政府推动了对社会福利数据的收集和分析，以评估我们社会的进步。在国家层面，英国国家统计局制定了一项衡量成年人（ONS 2016）、年轻人（ONS 2014b）和儿童（ONS 2014a）国民福祉的计划，包括对福祉的主观衡量。与成年人相比，对儿童主观幸福感的兴趣是一个较新的现象，其研究传统上受到有限数据可用性的阻碍。然而，在过去的十年里，这种情况发生了变化，我们刚刚开始了解公共政策与儿童幸福感之间的联系。尽管学术界和政策界对儿童主观幸福感的兴趣日益浓厚，但公共政策是否以及如何促进儿童主观幸福感的问题仍未得到充分研究。我的博士论文旨在通过使用PISA 2015研究中的数据研究教育政策与学生主观幸福感之间的关系来缩小这一差距，该研究首次在PISA中收集了学生主观幸福感的数据，特别是总体生活满意度（LS）。我用先进的定量方法——主要是多水平回归分析——研究了33个国家15岁学生的LS。研究结果表明，教育政策和实践可以在塑造学生的主观幸福感方面发挥作用。特别是，我的博士论文提出了一些分析，证明了几个与教育政策相关的因素与学生的LS之间的联系，这在几乎所有国家都特别突出——与学校工作有关的焦虑、欺凌和父母对学校的情感支持。结果还表明，学校可能在塑造学生的学习能力方面发挥重要作用。此外，在许多国家，学校与教育政策和学生学习能力之间的联系因男女生和不同社会经济地位的学生而异。最后，在上述所有分析中，各国之间存在显著差异。此外，在我的博士学位即将结束时，我对2018年PISA的数据进行了探索性分析，结果显示，自2015年以来，几乎所有参与国家的学生的LS都在全球范围内下降，尤其是女孩，到目前为止，下降幅度最大的是英国。该奖学金将侧重于通过出版物、参与和传播活动，最大限度地提高我的研究在学术和政策方面的影响，同时也将通过制定资助提案、获得相关培训和获得一些教学经验，帮助我为学术生涯的下一阶段做好准备。作为奖学金的一部分，我将在博士工作的基础上进行3项新的研究。这些将解决PISA 2015的一些数据限制，这些限制最近在PISA 2018和PISA for Development中被克服了。这些新的研究也将拓宽我博士研究的范围，填补文献中的一些重要空白。新的研究将包括一项在英国背景下的研究，一项针对低收入国家学生SWB的比较研究，以及一项针对中等收入和高收入国家的比较研究，探索更广泛的主观和心理健康结果，包括心理健康结果。总的来说，这项工作对我们理解儿童的主观幸福感是否以及如何受到学校和教育政策的影响做出了重要贡献，支持了教育政策也应该根据其对儿童主观幸福感的影响来评估的呼吁。

The finding that beyond a certain level increases in GDP do not translate into greater happiness (Easterlin 1974, Layard 2006) has triggered a growing academic and policy interest in SWB over the last four decades (Diener et al. 1999; Diener et al 2018). In 2009, the highly influential report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (Stiglitz 2009) advised that social progress should be assessed using SWB indicators. Since then, governments in many countries have promoted the collection and analysis of SWB data to assess progress in our societies. At the national level, in the United Kingdom (UK), the Office for National Statistics has created a programme to measure national well-being for adults (ONS 2016), young people (ONS 2014b) and children (ONS 2014a), including subjective measures of well-being. Compared to adults, interest in child SWB is a more recent phenomenon and its study has been traditionally hindered by limited data availability. However, this has changed over the last decade and we have just started to learn about the links between public policy and children's SWB. Despite the increasing academic and policy interest in SWB, the questions of whether and how public policy can promote children's SWB remain understudied. My PhD thesis aimed to reduce this gap by studying the association between education policy and students' SWB using data from the PISA 2015 study, which collected for the first time in PISA data on students' SWB -in particular, on overall life satisfaction (LS). I investigated this question by using advanced quantitative methods -mainly multilevel regression analysis- to study the LS of 15-year-old students in 33 countries. Findings suggest that education policy and practice can make a difference in shaping students' SWB. In particular, my PhD thesis presents analysis demonstrating an association between several education policy-relevant factors and students' LS, which is especially prominent -and observed in almost all countries- for schoolwork-related anxiety, bullying and parents' emotional support in relation to school. Results also indicate that schools may play an important role in shaping students' LS. In addition, in many countries, the links between schools and education policy and students' LS differ for girls and boys and for students of different socio-economic status. Finally, in all the analyses described above, there are significant differences across countries. Furthermore, towards the end of my PhD, I conducted an exploratory analysis of data from PISA 2018 which reveals a worldwide decline in students' LS since 2015 in almost all participating countries, particularly among girls, and the largest decline is by far observed in the UK.This fellowship will focus on maximising the academic and policy impact of my research through publications and engagement and dissemination activities and it will also be oriented to help me prepare for the next stage in my academic career by developing grant proposals, accessing relevant training and gaining some teaching experience. As part of the fellowship, I will conduct 3 new studies building on my PhD work. These will address some of the data limitations of PISA 2015, which have recently been overcome in PISA 2018 and PISA for Development. These new studies will also broaden the scope of my PhD research to fill some important gaps in the literature. New research will include a study in the context of the UK, a comparative study focusing on students' SWB in low-income countries and a comparative study in middle- and high-income countries exploring a wider range of subjective and psychological well-being outcomes, including mental health outcomes. Overall, this work makes key contributions to our understanding of whether and how children's SWB can be influenced by schools and education policy, supporting calls that education policy should also be assessed in terms of its impact in children's SWB.