Associations of perceived school and year group climate with mental health among children aged 7-to-11 years

Donaldson, Caitlyn, Morgan, Kelly ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8685-1177, Ouerghi, Safia, Lewis, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8603-2761 and Moore, Graham ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6136-3978 2025. Associations of perceived school and year group climate with mental health among children aged 7-to-11 years. Child Indicators Research 10.1007/s12187-024-10213-7

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Abstract

Schools are an important setting for interventions to improve mental health. There is growing evidence that school climate – sometimes expressed as the perceptions that children have about the relationships, safety, values, and beliefs within their school – can impact child mental health. Poor child mental health is associated with feelings of distress as well deficits in functioning. However, while most studies have focused on school climate, climate at lower levels of nesting, including year group, may be important. Cross-sectional data on emotional and behavioural difficulties from 32,606 children in primary schools in Wales (ages 7–11, year groups 3–6) were collected via a school survey, delivered online and within the classroom environment to all children who consented, and analysed using multilevel modelling. Models were then extended to consider how aggregated measures of year group and school climate are associated with mental health outcomes. The unadjusted variance partition coefficients (VPCs) indicated that 2.8% of the variance in emotional difficulties and 3.2% in behavioural difficulties were attributable to differences in the year group, while school-level differences represented 2.4% and 3.5%, respectively. More positive year group and school climate were associated with more positive mental health outcomes. School and year group climate are independently associated with primary school children’s mental health. Interventions to support mental health should aim to optimise the whole school climate, as well as climate within year group clusters.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education) Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer)
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	1874-897X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 January 2025
Date of Acceptance:	20 December 2024
Last Modified:	29 Jan 2025 15:03
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175257

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