Gender Differences in Happiness and Life Satisfaction Among Adolescents in Hong Kong: Relationships and Self-Concept

Wnuk et al. (2012, p. 465) make a similar distinction by defining happiness as a cognitive balance between one’s desire and passion for life as well as evaluation of life up to now, and evaluation of life in recent days. Meanwhile, life satisfaction consists of three perspectives: past, present, and future.

It is acknowledged that the scale used here has been criticized in the literature for., among other things, its lack of conceptual clarity and structure (Cummins 2013; Kashdan 2004). According to Kashdan (2004), the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire mainly overlaps with the concepts of self-esteem and sense of purpose, which might be affecting the findings. Cummins (2013, p. 195) suggests that a single question can be a viable measurement of happiness. To ensure robustness, we have tried to use agreement to the statement “I am very happy” as an alternative measurement of happiness. Similar results can be obtained (results available upon request). Perhaps importantly, the effects of self-esteem and purpose in life did not change. Additionally, a considerable number of recent studies still utilize the scale to capture happiness under a range of contexts (e.g., Holder et al. 2010; Wei et al. 2011). While this is surely not a good reason to accept a flawed measure (Cummins 2013), unfortunately we have to leave the problem of measurements as an improvement in future studies. Further discussion regarding this point can be found in Sect. 4. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.

Results are available upon request. Unfortunately, there is no centralized public examination until the end of high school in Hong Kong. As respondents come from nine different schools, objective and comparable evaluations about their academic performance are not available. It is also noted that there is evidence that academic satisfaction is directly influenced by academic results (Xiao et al. 2009).

Correlation figures by gender can be found in the online appendix, available at the journal website. The figures are very similar across the two gender groups for the main variables.

Results from moderation tests with interaction terms between gender and other explanatory variables are consistent with those in the pooled models below and are largely significant. However, as the interpretation of the results are less straightforward, the results are presented in the online appendix.