Associations between early school wellbeing and mental health in England, mainland China and Hong Kong

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Capitalising on the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) measure, the present multi-informant study examined early school wellbeing in 1,060 children (M age = 5.19 years, SD = 0.59; 47.7% girls) across three culturally and educationally distinct contexts: England, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, the cross-site measurement invariance of child- and parent-reported school wellbeing scores was examined. Results demonstrated partial scalar invariance across all three sites for both child- and parent-reported school wellbeing, indicating that the assessment of school wellbeing was comparable across geographic contexts. Latent mean comparisons revealed no significant site differences in either child- or parent-rated school wellbeing. Associations between child and parent ratings of school wellbeing were small but consistent across sites. Parent-rated but not child-rated school wellbeing was consistently negatively associated with parent-rated mental health across all sites. Together, these findings provide robust evidence that young children’s self-reported school wellbeing can be meaningfully compared across diverse geographic contexts and highlight the importance of incorporating children’s own perspectives when assessing early school experiences. School wellbeing school enjoyment cross-cultural mental health Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Introduction Defined hedonically, ‘wellbeing’ refers to the experience of positive emotions - such as happiness and contentment. However, from a eudaimonic (i.e., ‘living well’) perspective, wellbeing also encompasses flourishing, or the development of one’s full potential (Huppert et al., 2009). Children’s feelings of happiness and fulfilment within the school context merit investigation, not least because school typically constitutes a significant proportion of school-aged children’s waking hours (Statista, 2018). Indeed, for young children, navigating the complexities of starting school, and feeling positive about the school environment (i.e., school wellbeing) are valuable indicators of flourishing. Consistent with the eudaimonic view, wellbeing in the early school years predicts academic attainment (Morris et al., 2021; Jirout et al., 2023), school engagement (Gutman & Vorhaus, 2012), reduced problem behaviours (Gregory et al, 2021; Tobia et al., 2019), prosociality (Dempsey et al., 2023) and overall life satisfaction (Casas & Gonzalez, 2017). As noted in a review by Ben-Arieh et al. (2014), findings linking child wellbeing to developmental outcomes have led to four fundamental shifts within research on child wellbeing: (i) ‘from negative to positive wellbeing; (ii) ‘from protection to participation; (iii) ‘from well-becoming to well-being’; and (iv) from traditional to new domains of wellbeing. Building on this work, Fattore et al (2019) called for researchers to integrate children’s perspectives into research on child wellbeing, and to investigate whether there are shared or different meanings and experiences of wellbeing across national contexts. Unfortunately, as in many areas of psychology, studies of children’s school wellbeing have focused narrowly on Minority World (i.e., primarily ‘Western’) countries. Empirical work on adult understanding of wellbeing shows that some features of wellbeing, such as an emphasis on relationships and psychological health cut across geographic contexts and diverse cultures. However, other features of wellbeing, such as autonomy, seem to demonstrate both cultural and geographic variation (Sollis et al., 2024). Between-country comparisons in children’s academic attainments, such as those offered by the Programme for International Scales of Assessment (PISA) have also sparked debate regarding a perceived tension between pedagogical approaches designed to accelerate knowledge acquisition (e.g., teacher-led learning, homework) and activities (e.g., joyful group play) intended to promote child wellbeing (Heller-Sahlgren, 2018). Importantly, however, others have adopted the eudaimonic perspective to challenge the assumed trade-off between knowledge acquisition and wellbeing. For example, O’Shaughnessy (2015, p.32) argues that: “ the old dichotomy that you can have happy children or successful children is wrong. A true education provides not one, or the other, but both ”. Moreover, the sense of purpose and fulfilment that lies at the heart of flourishing is likely to be culturally embedded, highlighting the need for researchers to adopt cross-cultural designs and go beyond the traditional reliance on single-item measures of school wellbeing (e.g., Clarke 2020; Fattore et al, 2019). The current study was therefore designed to address the geographical imbalance of research into school wellbeing by investigating whether a new measure of school wellbeing (the “How I Feel About My School” [HIFAMS] measure; Allen et al., 2018) is appropriate for use across diverse geographic contexts with distinct school systems. As discussed below, the HIFAMS was selected as an index of school wellbeing because the availability of a child-friendly version represents a key advantage over other measures. Children’s right to be heard on matters that affect them is enshrined within Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Yet although starting school is a significant milestone in children’s lives, existing studies of young children’s school wellbeing rely heavily on ratings from parents or teachers, whose perspectives, although important, are inevitably ‘adultcentric’ (Schwab et al., 2020; Tobia et al., 2019). Highlighting this oversight, a qualitative study that compared school readiness initiatives with young children’s own priorities at school showed that these initiatives often focus on issues that are salient for adults (e.g., academic skills and children’s self-regulation) rather than those that matter for children (e.g., school liking, environment and family-school relationship; O’Farrelly et al., 2020). Developed in response to this challenge, the HIFAMS assesses wellbeing across 7 school-related contexts (e.g., on the way to school, in the classroom, in the playground, with peers, with the teacher). Responses from a study of 2,345 British 4- to 12-year-old children show that the HIFAMS displays good construct validity and test-retest reliability, even for children as young as 4 years of age (Allen et al, 2018). Although gathering multi-informant reports on children’s wellbeing serves to provide different perspective on adaptive functioning, discrepancies between informant ratings vary in magnitude across informant pairs (e.g., parent-child, parent-teacher) and outcome of interest (Rescorla et al. 2014), and are often poorly understood (De Los Reyes et al, 2019a, b). Despite the use of identical items on child and adult versions of the HIFAMS, child-ratings of school wellbeing using the HIFAMS appear unrelated to teacher-ratings, and only very modestly associated with parent-ratings (Allen et al., 2018). Nevertheless, child- and parent-responses to the HIFAMS display similar levels of stability across a 13-month period (Dempsey et al., 2023), indicating that the difference between child and adult perspectives does not reflect poor stability in child ratings. Importantly for the current study, the degree to which informants cohere when evaluating psychological constructs appears to differ across geographic regions. Coherence is typically greater in regions demonstrating ‘cultural tightness’, that is, strong cultural norms and low tolerance for deviations from these norms (De Los Reyes et al, 2019b; Gefland et al., 2006). For example, in a study based on the World Value Survey that involved 24 countries (N = 38,924) De Los Reyes and colleagues (2019b) found that coherence in cross-informant mental health ratings was stronger in culturally tight contexts (e.g., Singapore, India) than in culturally loose countries (e.g., the Netherlands, Israel). Perhaps unexpectedly, the three sites in the current study mainland China, England and Hong Kong showed similarly medium-level rankings for cultural tightness, indicating that parent-child convergence in school wellbeing may also be similar across these three distinct regions. School Wellbeing Across Geographic Contexts Promoting wellbeing is a key global priority across the lifespan (UN, 2015), sparking multi-site studies of school wellbeing in older children that show encouraging levels of consistency across geographic contexts. For example, analysis of the Children’s World study (Rees et al., 2017) showed consistency of wellbeing measurement across almost 95,000 10- and 12-year-olds living in 35 countries (Rees et al., 2018, see also Kim & Main, 2017). Smaller, rich interview-based studies also highlight cross-geographic similarities in children’s perceptions of wellbeing. For example, in an interview study of 53 9 - 12-year-old children living in Wales and the Czech Republic, peer difficulties and disrupted family relations were, in each site, viewed as key threats to wellbeing, whilst supportive relationships were linked with positive wellbeing (Sabolova et al., 2020). Notably, however, each of the above multi-site studies relied on children older than 8 years of age. Indeed, in a recent systematic review of child wellbeing using different informants, just 22 of 186 studies included assessed wellbeing in children below 11 years of age, with only 4 of these studies examining wellbeing in 5-year-old children and younger (Cho & Yo, 2020). Given that poor wellbeing at the start of schooling (i.e., between 5 and 7 years of age) is known to have lasting impacts on both general wellbeing and academic outcomes (Schlack et al., 2021), the lack of studies that assess young children’s own perceptions of their school wellbeing is striking and may be best explained by the scarcity of developmentally appropriate measures. Evidence that the HIFAMS may be a promising tool for addressing this gap comes from a study of 228 Swedish 5- to 8-year-old children, whose responses to the HIFAMS were similar in structure to that of British children (Riad et al., 2021). While measurement invariance was not formally assessed, the study results do suggest that the HIFAMS is appropriate for use across different educational and geographic contexts. At this point, some salient contrasts between the three sites in the current study (England, mainland China, Hong Kong) deserve note. The first of these concerns contrasting philosophies regarding early years education. In England, early years education is child-focused and promotes playful learning through free-flow classrooms and a focus on positive relationships (Cheng, Benson, Lau, & Fung, 2009; Watson & Briggs, 2001). By contrast, in mainland China teaching is knowledge-focused and didactic. Both mainland China and Hong Kong are deeply Confucian in their cultural heritage, but Hong Kong was under British Colonial Rule for 156 years (1841-1997), with the 1984 Sino-British agreement stipulating that the British-style economic and social systems would be preserved for 50 years. Adhering to this agreement, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau advocates informal play-based learning in the early years (Chan & Rao, 2024). That said, case-study evidence demonstrates the difficulty of implementing this approach, given the territory’s longstanding tradition of formal, didactic Confucian teaching methods (Humpage, 2020). Thus, from both cultural and educational perspectives, Hong Kong represents an interesting bridge between England and mainland China, enabling our three-site study to go beyond the traditional East-West dichotomy. Alongside this conceptual advance, our proposed study also advances the methodological rigour of research into young children’s school wellbeing by testing for measurement invariance to ensure that scores are conceptually equivalent across these different sites (Stevanovic et al., 2017) and by adopting a multi-informant design that enables benchmarking of site differences against informant contrasts. School Wellbeing and Mental Health There is growing interest in understanding the overlap between children’s wellbeing and poor mental health. Studies of older children and adolescents indicate that wellbeing and poor mental health are distinct but related dimensions with unique predictors and outcomes (Patalay et al., 2016; Lereya et al., 2022). For example, in a large England-based longitudinal cohort study with children between 10 and 14 years of age, two common mental health indicators in childhood and adolescence - parented-rated externalising and internalising problems - were only modestly associated with children’s rating of school wellbeing (Patalay & Fitzsimmons, 2016). However, few studies have examined the association between school wellbeing and mental health in younger children, a critical omission given the transition to formal schooling is often a challenging period for young children (Hughes et al., 2024) and the fact that school wellbeing and mental have specific influences on social and academic outcomes (e.g., Patalay and Fitzsimons, 2016). Of the studies that examine the extent to which school wellbeing and mental health overlap, findings have shown small-to-modest association in English contexts. For example, child-reported school wellbeing (as measured by the HIFAMS) across over 2000 children in England between 5 and 8 years of age only explained a small amount of variance in parent- and teacher-reported mental health ( r = -0.11, and -0.17 respectively; Allen et al., 2018, see also, Devine et al., 2025). However, few studies have directly compared the magnitude of the association between school wellbeing and mental health across geographic contexts. The Current Study The current study involved three culturally distinct geographic contexts (England, Hong Kong and mainland China) and included both parent and child ratings of school wellbeing. Our first aim was to assess the HIFAMS’s suitability as a measure of school wellbeing across geographic contexts for both child- and parent-report. Based on prior findings (e.g., Riad et al., 2021), we hypothesise that, for both children and parents, the HIFAMS will show similar structure across contexts suggesting its appropriate use across geographic contexts. Our second aim was to examine the agreement between child and parent report of school wellbeing across geographic contexts. Given differences in the perspectives of adults and children noted above and specifically for the HIFAMS (e.g., Allen et al. 2018), in each site we expect to find limited association across child- and parent-reported school wellbeing. Our third aim was to explore individual differences in school wellbeing in relation to child mental health and to assess whether these associations vary by site or informant. Given previous research we expect that school wellbeing will be only modestly negatively associated with child mental health. Given known associations between both school wellbeing and mental health and family adversity (e.g., Newland et al., 2019 although see Morris et al., 2021), we include a broad index of family adversity (including socio-economic status, parental anxiety and depression, and negative family life events) as a covariate in analyses to ensure that effects are not being driven by children’s family environment. Method Participants Data were drawn from [PROJECT NAME MASKED], a cross-site project examining school readiness and wellbeing among children in England, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Children attending Reception (4–5 years) or Year 1 (5–6 years) in England, and Kindergarten Year 2 (4–5 years) or Kindergarten Year 3 (5–6 years) in Hong Kong and mainland China, were eligible to participate if they spoke English, Cantonese, or Mandarin, as appropriate to the site, and had no known history of developmental delay. Site-appropriate recruitment procedures were implemented. In England, recruitment was conducted through schools and nationwide social media advertisements. Children from 22 schools completed assessments via video calls, and parents completed online questionnaires between March and August 2021. In Hong Kong, children were recruited from 29 schools, with child assessments administered via video calls and parent questionnaires completed online between May 2022 and March 2023. In mainland China, children were recruited from 128 schools across more than 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities through kindergartens, online channels (e.g., RedNote [Xiaohongshu]; a Chinese social media platform loosely comparable to a mix of Instagram and Pinterest ), and researchers’ and participants’ own social networks. Child assessments were conducted via video calls, and parents completed online questionnaires between May 2022 and March 2023. Across the three sites, a total of 1,181 children participated in the study ( M age = 5.25 years, SD = 0.53; 49.7% girls; see Table 1 for participant characteristics). Data and code used for this paper can be found on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/auwk9/overview). Procedure All procedures received favourable reviews from the relevant Research Ethics Committees [MASKED FOR REVIEW]. Across all three sites, informed parental consent was obtained via an online consent form prior to scheduling a video call, during which parents were present while trained graduate researchers administered the school wellbeing measure alongside a 45-minute battery of socio-cognitive tasks not relevant to the current study. Parents completed the parent version of the HIFAMS via an online questionnaire. Families received culturally appropriate tokens of appreciation for participation (£10 vouchers in England, certificates of participation in Hong Kong, and certificates, medals, and trophies in mainland China). Measures School Wellbeing The How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) measure (Allen et al., 2018; https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/hifams/) is a 7-item questionnaire suitable for children aged 4 to 11 years. Each item (listed in Table 2) was read aloud to the child, who then selected a response from three options presented on screen and visualised with cartoon faces showing different expressions (2 = happy , 1 = ok , 0 = sad ). A second researcher on the call recorded children’s responses. The parent-report version of HIFAMS uses a 5-point rating scale (5 = very happy , 4 = happy , 3 = neither happy nor unhappy , 2 = unhappy , 1 = very unhappy ) for the same 7 items as the child-report version. Previous research has shown that the HIFAMS demonstrates moderate test-retest reliability and internal consistency among British (Allen et al., 2018) and Swedish primary school children (Riad et al., 2021). As our study was the first to administer the HIFAMS during online testing sessions, we examined measurement invariance across online and in-person assessments and found full invariance across assessment modalities highlighting the appropriateness of online administration (see Supplementary Materials and Table S1). The original English version of the questionnaire was used with the English sample. For use in Hong Kong and mainland China, the HIFAMS scale was translated into Cantonese and Mandarin using a multi-forward translation procedure (Erkut, 2010). Three bilingual researchers fluent in both English and Cantonese/Mandarin independently translated the instructions and all items. These translations were then compared, and any discrepancies were resolved with lead researchers across sites. No adaptations in terms of item deletion or re-wording were necessary. Given that both child- and parent-rated school wellbeing scores were negatively skewed, and following procedures used in other studies (e.g., Devine et al., 2025), we recoded items into binary indicators prior to analyses. Children’s responses were dichotomised by collapsing not happy and ok into 0 versus happy coded as 1. Parent responses were dichotomised by collapsing very unhappy through happy into 0 (i.e., all responses that were not “very happy”) versus very happy coded as 1. Total scores for both informants ranged between 0 and 7, with higher scores indicating greater school wellbeing. Mental Health The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman et al., 2000) is a widely used, well-validated measure of mental health for children and adolescents aged 3–16 years. The SDQ has been shown to be appropriate for use across a range of different contexts and countries (e.g., Foley et al., 2021), with favourable psychometric properties (Stone et al., 2015). In addition to the original English-language version (Goodman et al., 2000), we used the Cantonese and Mandarin translations (Lai et al., 2010; Du et al., 2008) in Hong Kong and mainland China. Parents rated how true each of the 20 items was for their child using a 3-point scale (0 = not true , 1 = somewhat true , 2 = very true ). Ten items from the hyperactivity and conduct problem subscales were summed to give a dimension of externalising problems, with higher scores indicating greater externalising difficulties. Ten items from the emotional and peer problem subscales were summed to give a dimension of internalising problems, with higher scores indicating greater internalising difficulties. Consistent with prior research using the Chinese version of the SDQ (Cronbach’s α s = .57–.69; Wang et al., 2023), internal consistency for the externalising and internalising subscales in the present mainland Chinese sample was modest, Cronbach’s α s = .56–.74, highlighting the need for continued cultural adaptation. Following earlier work establishing partial scalar invariance of the SDQ across these three sites (Chen et al., 2025), we removed three items (lies, fights, steals) from the externalising problems dimension and four items (good friend, popularity, best with adults, somatic symptoms) from the internalising problems dimension. These two dimensions then improved internal consistency, Cronbach’s α s = .63–.76, and were used to construct a good-fitting two-factor measurement model. Table S2 presents a detailed selection of the SDQ items in modelling the mental health latent factors. Family Adversity Following procedures adopted in other studies (e.g., Heng et al., 2025), we constructed a seven-indicator family adversity index using a data-driven approach. Each indicator (parent education, perceived social standing, family stress, negative life events, non-specific psychological distress, depression, and anxiety) was dummy-coded based on site-specific lower and upper quartiles, and summed to produce a composite score ranging from 0 to 7. Internal consistency for this index was acceptable in each site, Cronbach’s α s ≈ .71. Full scoring procedures and descriptive statistics are provided in the Supplementary Materials and Table S3. Analytic Strategy We analysed the data using a latent variable framework in M plus version 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to specify measurement models and multiple-groups CFA to establish across-site measurement invariance for child- and parent-rated school wellbeing. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was then used to examine the universality in associations between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing and mental health. Because both the HIFAMS and SDQ used categorical response formats, we adopted a mean- and variance-adjusted weighted least squares estimator (WLSMV; Roos & Bauldry, 2022). To further assess the convergence between child and parental ratings of school wellbeing, we conducted a single-paper meta-analysis (McShane & Böckenholt, 2017) using a random-effects model implemented in the R packages robumeta (Fisher & Tipton, 2015), metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010), and dplyr (Wickham et al., 2024). Plots were produced in R using the tidyverse package (Wickham et al., 2019) to create summary plots and the Hmisc (Harrell et al., 2024), corrplot (Wei et al., 2024), and RColorBrewer (Neuwirth, 2022) packages to create the correlation heatmap. We evaluated model fit using three commonly recommended criteria: a root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) of 0.90, and a Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) of > 0.90 (Brown, 2015). In nested model comparisons, we used a significant increase in χ 2 to evaluate changes in model fit (Brown, 2015). Given a small amount of unplanned missingness we applied a default full information approach in M plus to retain all available cases in the analyses (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Unlike listwise deletion or mean replacement, this approach does not require assumptions of multivariate normality or completely random missingness and yields less biased parameter estimates and standard errors (Enders, 2001). Participant demographics (child age and gender) and family adversity were included as covariates in analyses. Results Descriptive Statistics Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for binary-scored school wellbeing items and total scores by informant and site (raw-score descriptives are provided in Table S4). Table S5 presents the means, standard deviations, ranges, and distribution coefficients for the raw scores of main study measures in the whole sample. Figure 1 shows item-level means for the binary-scored school wellbeing items in each site, plotted separately for child and parent report. Although the overall pattern of item rankings was broadly similar across sites (e.g., item 4, “at the playground,” generally received higher child ratings), several site-specific differences emerged. For example, compared with parents in Hong Kong and mainland China, English parents tended to give higher ratings on item 3, “doing work,” χ ²(2) = 47.04, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .205, and item 7, “think about school,” χ ²(2) = 41.70, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .193. Partial Scalar Invariance of Child- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing We began by testing the fit of a measurement model in which all child-rated school wellbeing items loaded onto one single wellbeing latent factor, both in the whole sample and within each site. Modification indices indicated correlated residuals between item 3 (“doing work”) and item 6 (“think about teacher”), suggesting additional shared variance between these closely related indicators beyond what was accounted for by the latent factor (Brown, 2015). These correlated residuals were therefore included in subsequent models. In the whole sample, this one-factor model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.049, 90% CI [0.035, 0.064], CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.970. The across-site measurement invariance of the one-factor structure for school wellbeing was examined by imposing progressively stricter constraints on the model (Brown, 2015). A comprehensive summary of comparing model fit indices is shown in Table 3. In the partial scalar invariant model where two thresholds (items 2 and 5) were freely estimated in the English sample, constraining all remaining thresholds and all factor loadings to be equal across sites did not significantly reduce model fit, relative to the less parsimonious configural invariant model, Δ χ 2 (20) = 25.95, p = .167. We adopted the same stepwise procedure to establish the measurement model and to test across-site measurement invariance of parent-rated school wellbeing (see Table 3). Modification indices indicated correlated residuals among all items, suggesting additional shared variance across indicators beyond what was accounted for by the latent factor (Brown, 2015). These correlated residuals were therefore included in subsequent models. In the whole sample, this one-factor model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.058, 90% CI [0.042, 0.075], CFI = 0.992, TLI = 0.983. In the partial scalar invariant model, three thresholds (items 3, 4, and 7) were freely estimated in the English sample, and three thresholds (items 3, 4, and 5) were freely estimated in the mainland Chinese sample. Constraining all remaining thresholds and all factor loadings to equality across sites did not significantly reduce model fit, relative to the less parsimonious configural invariant model, Δ χ 2 (16) = 17.47, p = .356. In sum, both the child-reported and parent-reported school wellbeing latent factors exhibited partial scalar invariance, with equal form, equal loadings, and partially equal thresholds in all three sites, highlighting the appropriateness of the measures for use across these geographic contexts. Next, we examined site differences in child- and parent-rated school wellbeing. Constraining the latent means to be equal across sites did not significantly degrade model fit for either child-reported school wellbeing, Δ χ ²(2) = 3.88, p = .144, or parent-reported school wellbeing, Δ χ ²(2) = 1.92, p = .383. Findings remained even when covariates (child age, child gender, and family adversity) were included in the models: child report, RMSEA = 0.021, 90% CI [0, 0.034], CFI = 0.990, TLI = 0.989; parent report, RMSEA = 0.046, 90% CI [0.035, 0.057], CFI = 0.986, TLI = 0.983. Taken together, analyses indicate that, for both child- and parent-report, the HIFAMS measure of school wellbeing functions equivalently across the three geographic regions group with no mean-level differences in school wellbeing across sites. Associations Between Child- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing Building on the partial scalar invariant models, we applied multiple-groups SEM to examine cross-site consistency in associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing. To adjust for demographic and contextual variability, both the child- and parent-reported wellbeing latent factors were regressed onto child age, child gender, and family adversity, with the two latent factors freely covarying. The model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.031, 90% CI [0.023, 0.037], CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.980. All indicators loaded significantly onto their respective latent factors: .54–.82 for child-rated items and .62–.91 for parent-rated items across sites. As shown in Figure 2, child and parent ratings of school wellbeing showed a small but significant positive association in England, Std.Est = .16, p = .016, and Hong Kong, Std.Est = .16, p = .047, whereas this association was not observed in the mainland China. To test if the association between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing was invariant across sites, an equality constraint was placed on the covariance between the two latent factors. This model fitted the data well, RMSEA = 0.029, 90% CI [0.022, 0.036], CFI = 0.983, TLI = 0.981, and did not statistically deviate from the unconstrained model, Δ χ ²(2) = 3.15, p = .207, demonstrating that the strength of associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing was comparable in magnitude across the three sites (despite differences in statistical significance). We corroborated the consistency of the association across school wellbeing informants using a single-paper meta-analysis (SPM). As shown in Figure 3, the SPM revealed low heterogeneity in the strength of associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing after controlling for demographic and contextual variability, Q (2) = 3.08, p = .214. A low-to-moderate proportion of the observed variability in estimates may nonetheless reflect genuine heterogeneity rather than sampling/measurement errors, I ² = 35.08%. Even so, the SPM confirmed that a positive association between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing was statistically significant and highly consistent in each site, with a summary estimate of 0.11, p = .041, 95% CI [0.005, 0.212]. Associations Between School Wellbeing and Mental Health Following the same stepwise procedure, we established partial scalar invariance for a two-factor (i.e., internalising and externalising problems) mental health model across the three sites (Chen et al., 2025). After controlling for covariates (child age and gender and family adversity), no site-level differences in latent means were observed for parent-reported internalising or externalising problems (see Supplementary Materials and Table S6). Table 4 presents heatmaps of zero-order correlations among the main study measures in each site. Similarly, building on these established partial scalar invariant models, we conducted multiple-groups SEM to examine cross-site consistency in associations between school wellbeing, as rated by children and parents, and parent-reported mental health. The two mental health latent factors were allowed to covary freely and were regressed onto child-rated school wellbeing in one model and parent-rated wellbeing in a separate model. All latent factors were also regressed onto the covariates. The model provided an acceptable fit to the data for child-reported school wellbeing (see Figure 4), RMSEA = 0.035, 90% CI [0.030, 0.039], CFI = 0.957, TLI = 0.954, and for parent-reported school wellbeing (see Figure 5), RMSEA = 0.050, 90% CI [0.046, 0.054], CFI = 0.943, TLI = 0.937. Children’s ratings of school wellbeing were significantly and inversely associated with internalising problems in England, Std.Est = -.22, p = .004, but not in Hong Kong or mainland China. In contrast, across all three sites, parents’ ratings of school wellbeing were significantly and inversely associated with externalising problems, Std.Est ENG = -.33, Std.Est HK = -.27, Std.Est MC = -.27, p s < .001, and internalising problems, Std.Est ENG = -.46, p < .001, Std.Est HK = -.21, p = .007, Std.Est MC = -.19, p = .005. Imposing equality constraints on the regression paths linking school wellbeing with internalising and externalising problems resulted in a nonsignificant decrement in model fit for either informant: child-reported HIFAMS, Δ χ ²(4) = 6.08, p = .193; parent-reported HIFAMS, Δ χ ²(4) = 8.66, p = .067. These findings imply that the strengths of associations between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing and mental health are broadly comparable across the three sites. Discussion The current study aimed to (i) evaluate the applicability of the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) school wellbeing measure across different geographic contexts (i.e., England, Hong Kong and mainland China), (ii) examine child and parent perspectives of school wellbeing, and (iii) explore associations between school wellbeing and mental health. In doing so, the study makes a substantive conceptual and methodological contribution by providing the first multi-site, cross-cultural evaluation of a child self-report school wellbeing measure in early childhood. Although the HIFAMS school wellbeing measure has previously been validated within single-country European contexts (Allen et al., 2018; Riad et al., 2021), no prior work has tested whether young children across markedly different cultural and educational settings interpret and respond to this measure in comparable ways. The current study has demonstrated that the HIFAMS shows partial scalar invariance across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China for both child- and parent-reported versions, representing a critical advance, establishing that the HIFAMS captures a broadly equivalent construct of school wellbeing across diverse contexts. This is particularly important given the ongoing scarcity of developmentally appropriate self-report measures for children under seven years of age (Cho & Yo, 2020). Across all three sites, the HIFAMS showed a highly consistent one-factor structure, reinforcing prior evidence that young children conceptualise school wellbeing in broadly similar unified way across different early education systems (Riad et al., 2021). One notable psychometric feature was the residual association between the items “doing work” and “thinking about the teacher,” which emerged consistently across sites. This pattern suggests that, for young children, academic activities may be experienced as closely intertwined with their relationship with the teacher. Existing research highlights the central role of teacher–child relationships in shaping motivation, emotional security, and perceptions of competence (Givvin et al., 2001). Our findings extend this literature by suggesting that, at the start of formal schooling, children’s affective responses to learning tasks may be scaffolded by their feelings toward their teacher, a hypothesis that warrants further work examining pedagogical style and relational classroom climates. Despite substantial differences in educational philosophy and practice across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, we found no mean-level differences in school wellbeing for either child or parent reports. This finding challenges common assumptions that more didactic early education systems necessarily compromise children’s subjective wellbeing and aligns with eudaimonic perspectives emphasising that purpose, engagement, and positive relationships can coexist with academic learning (Clarke, 2020; O’Shaughnessy, 2015). Child and Parent Perceptions of School Wellbeing The current study also leveraged the multi-informant design to examine convergence and divergence between children’s and parents’ perspectives of school wellbeing. This is a crucial step for the field, as initiatives that rely exclusively on adult reports risk overlooking dimensions of school experience that are most salient to children themselves (Fattore et al., 2019; O’Farrelly et al., 2020). Consistent with earlier work using the HIFAMS (Allen et al., 2018; Dempsey et al., 2023), associations between parent and child ratings of school wellbeing were small but reliable, and importantly, comparable across all three sites. Parents tended to overestimate children’s happiness in the classroom and underestimate their child’s happiness in the playground and when thinking about the teacher, a pattern that replicated acrossall three geographic contexts. One possible explanation is that children are more likely to communicate negative playground experiences to parents, whereas positive or routine classroom experiences, and especially affective experiences linked to teachers, may be less frequently discussed at home. Developmental factors may also play a role, as parent–child agreement on school wellbeing appears to increase with age (e.g., Dempsey et al., 2023), highlighting that early discrepancies reflect differences in perspective rather than poor reliability of child self-report. School Wellbeing and Mental Health Across all three sites, parent-rated school wellbeing was robustly associated with parent-rated internalising and externalising difficulties, reflecting strong within-informant convergence across school wellbeing and mental health. By contrast, child-rated school wellbeing showed no association with parent-rated internalising or externalising problems, with one exception: in the English sample, lower child-reported school wellbeing was linked to higher parent-rated internalising problems. This isolated association may reflect greater parental sensitivity to children’s internal emotional states in the English context, or cultural differences in the salience and communication of emotional distress. Overall, however, the findings align with prior work showing that child self-report of school wellbeing capture dimensions of experience that are not well indexed by adult reports of mental health (Allen et al., 2018; Patalay & Fitzsimons, 2016). Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions This study benefits from several notable strengths, including recruitment across three culturally and educationally distinct sites, the inclusion of both child and parent informants, and the use of rigorous psychometric methods to establish cross-site measurement invariance of school wellbeing. Incorporating measures of mental health allowed us to situate school wellbeing within a broader developmental context, and the use of multi-group structural equation modelling and single-paper meta-analytic techniques strengthened the robustness and interpretability of cross-site comparisons. Nonetheless, several limitations should also be acknowledged. Remote data collection precluded direct observation of classroom environments, limiting insight into how specific pedagogical practices shape school wellbeing. Additionally, the dichotomisation of HIFAMS responses, while psychometrically justified, may obscure meaningful variability among the smaller proportion of children with lower levels of school wellbeing. Finally, the cross-sectional design restricts conclusions about developmental change. Longitudinal research is needed to examine whether parent–child convergence in school wellbeing increases similarly across cultural contexts and whether early school wellbeing predicts later academic and mental health outcomes. Conclusions By establishing that the HIFAMS school wellbeing measure functions equivalently across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, this study provides the first rigorous evidence that young children’s self-reported school wellbeing can be meaningfully compared across diverse cultural contexts. The findings underscore the robustness and utility of the HIFAMS as a multi-informant tool and highlight the importance of foregrounding children’s own perspectives in research on early school experiences. Taken together, current findings reinforce the argument that parents are not necessarily optimal proxies for children’s school wellbeing, particularly in early childhood. Children’s report on their own school experience provide unique and valid information that cannot be inferred from parental assessments of school wellbeing or mental health alone. Initiatives that assess school wellbeing without incorporating children’s own perspectives therefore risk misplacing supports and interventions (Pollard et al., 2003; Hughes, Dempsey, & Fink, 2024). 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Children’s understandings of well-being in global and local contexts: Theoretical and methodological considerations for a multinational qualitative study. Child Indicators Research, 12, 385-407. Ringoot, A. P., Tiemeier, H., Jaddoe, V. W. V., So, P., Hofman, A., Verhulst, F. C., & Jansen, P. W. (2015). Parental depression and child well-being: young children's self-reports helped addressing biases in parent reports. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 68(8), 928-938. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2015.03.009 De Los Reyes, A., Lerner, M. D., Keeley, L. M., Weber, R. J., Drabick, D. A., Rabinowitz, J., & Goodman, K. L. (2019). Improving interpretability of subjective assessments about psychological phenomena: A review and cross-cultural meta-analysis. Review of General Psychology, 23(3), 293-319. De Los Reyes, A., Lerner, M. D., Keeley, L. M., Weber, R. J., Drabick, D. A., Rabinowitz, J., & Goodman, K. L. (2019). Improving interpretability of subjective assessments about psychological phenomena: A review and cross-cultural meta-analysis. Review of General Psychology, 23(3), 293-319. Wang, Z., Devine, R. T., Wong, K. K., & Hughes, C. (2016). Theory of mind and executive function during middle childhood across cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 149, 6-22. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.09.028 Humpage, V. (2020). Navigating a complex pedagogical landscape: Case study of a progressive early years model in Hong Kong (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield). Dempsey, C., Grimmel, J., Fink, E., & Hughes, C. (2023). Becoming school-parents: contrasts between mothers’ and fathers’ speech samples and links with psychological distress and household disorder. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2023.2247593 Meaney, M. J. (2018). Perinatal maternal depressive symptoms as an issue for population health. American Journal of Psychiatry, 175(11), 1084-1093. Sweeney, S., & Wilson, C. (2023). Parental anxiety and offspring development: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 327, 64-78. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.01.128 Ömeroğulları, M., & Gläser-Zikuda, M. (2022). Relationships between school enjoyment, social integration, and achievement at the beginning of primary school: Does family background matter? European Journal of Psychology and Educational Research, 5(2), 127-143. https://doi.org/10.12973/ejper.5.2.127 Ayano, G., Lin, A., Dachew, B. A., Tait, R., Betts, K., & Alati, R. (2022). The impact of parental mental health problems on the educational outcomes of their offspring: Findings from the Raine Study. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 56(5), 510-524. Lui, M., Lau, G. K., Tam, V. C., Chiu, H. M., Li, S. S., & Sin, K. F. (2020). Parents’ impact on children’s school performance: Marital satisfaction, parental involvement, and mental health. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29, 1548-1560. Fattore, T., Fegter, S., & Hunner-Kreisel, C. (2019). Children’s understandings of well-being in global and local contexts: Theoretical and methodological considerations for a multinational qualitative study. Child Indicators Research, 12, 385-407. Tables Tables 1 to 4 are available in the supplementary files section Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files 3siteHIFAMSsupplementarymaterials19Jan.docx SupplementaryMaterial.docx 3siteHIFAMStables.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8670511","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":581866561,"identity":"2dafaf8a-6dd0-449b-ad0f-6fb32778c45d","order_by":0,"name":"Laura Katus","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA80lEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACPgY2MC0H5UswGEAYCTi1sIG0HGBgMCZdS2IDTIQYLYmfP7bVpc+PPnzwcWGbhbw5A/PDD4xtafi0HJY42HY4d+O5tGTjmW0Shjsb2IwlGNty8GhhbwBqOZC7sYfHTJp3m0SCwQEGMwbGtgp8Wpp/HAQ6zLCH//tviBb2bwS0sB0D2sKcIM/Dw8YM0cIDsgWPw5jZ0izOnDtsuIGHzVia95+E4YbDPMUSCedwe5+fvc34RkVZnbx8D/PDzzxn6uQNjrdv/PChLBmnFgZmKA30NZJIAm4NCCDfQIyqUTAKRsEoGJEAANHBSgNG6jGtAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"University of Greenwich","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Laura","middleName":"","lastName":"Katus","suffix":""},{"id":581866562,"identity":"7759cc04-0389-4b41-a7b4-08be264cca27","order_by":1,"name":"Elian Fink","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Sussex","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Elian","middleName":"","lastName":"Fink","suffix":""},{"id":581866563,"identity":"b275b881-7482-4b96-b70c-91b18a219e4d","order_by":2,"name":"Chengyi Xu","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Cambridge","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Chengyi","middleName":"","lastName":"Xu","suffix":""},{"id":581866564,"identity":"9c10ee34-ef96-49cb-a5b3-c3d422df527f","order_by":3,"name":"Siu Ching Wong","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Cambridge","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Siu","middleName":"Ching","lastName":"Wong","suffix":""},{"id":581866565,"identity":"b6eb6aa3-e90b-4ff5-8251-27880419631c","order_by":4,"name":"Claire Hughes","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Cambridge","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Claire","middleName":"","lastName":"Hughes","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-01-22 13:55:46","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8670511/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8670511/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":101630921,"identity":"456797f9-d66f-4069-b9c2-a1a79b52446d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":129186,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSummary Plots for\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eChild- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing Across Geographic Contexts and Items\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e. Error bars represent ± 1 \u003cem\u003eSE.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/c998666539ce24cf173da20c.png"},{"id":101630923,"identity":"5af1ffed-0959-4508-b4e3-571267c37876","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":5713,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eThis image is not available with this version.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/67afe750f21e75243cc6da91.png"},{"id":101752952,"identity":"d6e53b04-77c4-4c39-aa74-cca322bb3aaa","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-03 10:38:22","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":72481,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eForest Plot Displaying Effect Sizes for the Association Between Child- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing Across Sites\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote.\u003c/em\u003e Each square represents the site-specific regression coefficient (standardised), with the horizontal line reflecting the corresponding 95% confidence interval. Square sizes are proportional to the inverse-variance weights derived from each site’s standard error, such that more precise estimates (smaller \u003cem\u003eSE\u003c/em\u003es) appear with larger squares. The diamond represents the pooled random-effects estimate, weighted by inverse variance across sites.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/15688005b6d156a5ee2509cf.png"},{"id":101752821,"identity":"056c064d-9218-4747-af8c-ce1ee806e6b7","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-03 10:33:04","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":196147,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eStandardised WLSMV Estimates for Associations Between Child-Rated School Wellbeing and Parent-Rated Mental Health\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e. Results are based on partial scalar invariant models. Dash lines represent non-significant paths. Solid lines represent significant paths. *\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .05. **\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .01.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/b765c0028ff8f5213b0411f1.png"},{"id":101630926,"identity":"432cbed6-8b31-46bd-9b44-58d21599bd19","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"png","order_by":5,"title":"Figure 5","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":194141,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eStandardised WLSMV Estimates for Associations Between Parent-Rated School Wellbeing and Parent-Rated Mental Health\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e. Results are based on partial scalar invariant models. Dash lines represent non-significant paths. Solid lines represent significant paths. *\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .05. **\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .01.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/5844d4dafde64b3c02301b3d.png"},{"id":101755674,"identity":"a510189c-cb49-4b67-8314-1020576acff9","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-03 10:53:35","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1198596,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/cc8a80a5-d200-42bb-9295-93ed1b6008aa.pdf"},{"id":101630925,"identity":"c84d6e95-b74f-4f4d-87dd-fd47e931d1d7","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":39375,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"3siteHIFAMSsupplementarymaterials19Jan.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/1757d7358a7debee2a7350df.docx"},{"id":101630929,"identity":"4b29e258-4595-4ac5-a300-5d460db61bf8","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":108415,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SupplementaryMaterial.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/bdf20f9b432a876bf01af24f.docx"},{"id":101630928,"identity":"ab39a635-c179-4312-a1f9-fd4ab4d6274d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-02 05:27:28","extension":"docx","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":177604,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"3siteHIFAMStables.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8670511/v1/ef4ec424bf3f37099de4898b.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Associations between early school wellbeing and mental health in England, mainland China and Hong Kong","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eDefined hedonically, ‘wellbeing’ refers to the experience of positive emotions - such as happiness and contentment. However, from a eudaimonic (i.e., ‘living well’) perspective, wellbeing also encompasses flourishing, or the development of one’s full potential (Huppert et al., 2009). Children’s feelings of happiness and fulfilment within the school context merit investigation, not least because school typically constitutes a significant proportion of school-aged children’s waking hours (Statista, 2018). Indeed, for young children, navigating the complexities of starting school, and feeling positive about the school environment (i.e., school wellbeing) are valuable indicators of flourishing. Consistent with the eudaimonic view, wellbeing in the early school years predicts academic attainment (Morris et al., 2021; Jirout et al., 2023), school engagement (Gutman \u0026amp; Vorhaus, 2012), reduced problem behaviours (Gregory et al, 2021; Tobia et al., 2019), prosociality (Dempsey et al., 2023) and overall life satisfaction (Casas \u0026amp; Gonzalez, 2017). As noted in a review by Ben-Arieh et al. (2014), findings linking child wellbeing to developmental outcomes have led to four fundamental shifts within research on child wellbeing: (i) ‘from negative to positive wellbeing; (ii) ‘from protection to participation; (iii) ‘from well-becoming to well-being’; and (iv) from traditional to new domains of wellbeing. Building on this work, Fattore et al (2019) called for researchers to integrate children’s perspectives into research on child wellbeing, and to investigate whether there are shared or different meanings and experiences of wellbeing across national contexts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, as in many areas of psychology, studies of children’s school wellbeing have focused narrowly on Minority World (i.e., primarily ‘Western’) countries. Empirical work on adult understanding of wellbeing shows that some features of wellbeing, such as an emphasis on relationships and psychological health cut across geographic contexts and diverse cultures. However, other features of wellbeing, such as autonomy, seem to demonstrate both cultural and geographic variation (Sollis et al., 2024). Between-country comparisons in children’s academic attainments, such as those offered by the Programme for International Scales of Assessment (PISA) have also sparked debate regarding a perceived tension between pedagogical approaches designed to accelerate knowledge acquisition (e.g., teacher-led learning, homework) and activities (e.g., joyful group play) intended to promote child wellbeing (Heller-Sahlgren, 2018). Importantly, however, others have adopted the eudaimonic perspective to challenge the assumed trade-off between knowledge acquisition and wellbeing. For example, O’Shaughnessy (2015, p.32) argues that: “\u003cem\u003ethe old dichotomy that you can have happy children or successful children is wrong. A true education provides not one, or the other, but both\u003c/em\u003e”. Moreover, the sense of purpose and fulfilment that lies at the heart of flourishing is likely to be culturally embedded, highlighting the need for researchers to adopt cross-cultural designs and go beyond the traditional reliance on single-item measures of school wellbeing (e.g., Clarke 2020; Fattore et al, 2019).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe current study was therefore designed to address the geographical imbalance of research into school wellbeing by investigating whether a new measure of school wellbeing (the “How I Feel About My School” [HIFAMS] measure; Allen et al., 2018) is appropriate for use across diverse geographic contexts with distinct school systems. As discussed below, the HIFAMS was selected as an index of school wellbeing because the availability of a child-friendly version represents a key advantage over other measures.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChildren’s right to be heard on matters that affect them is enshrined within Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Yet although starting school is a significant milestone in children’s lives, existing studies of young children’s school wellbeing rely heavily on ratings from parents or teachers, whose perspectives, although important, are inevitably ‘adultcentric’ (Schwab et al., 2020; Tobia et al., 2019). Highlighting this oversight, a qualitative study that compared school readiness initiatives with young children’s own priorities at school showed that these initiatives often focus on issues that are salient for adults (e.g., academic skills and children’s self-regulation) rather than those that matter for children (e.g., school liking, environment and family-school relationship; O’Farrelly et al., 2020). Developed in response to this challenge, the HIFAMS assesses wellbeing across 7 school-related contexts (e.g., on the way to school, in the classroom, in the playground, with peers, with the teacher). Responses from a study of 2,345 British 4- to 12-year-old children show that the HIFAMS displays good construct validity and test-retest reliability, even for children as young as 4 years of age (Allen et al, 2018).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough gathering multi-informant reports on children’s wellbeing serves to provide different perspective on adaptive functioning, discrepancies between informant ratings vary in magnitude across informant pairs (e.g., parent-child, parent-teacher) and outcome of interest (Rescorla et al. 2014), and are often poorly understood (De Los Reyes et al, 2019a, b). Despite the use of identical items on child and adult versions of the HIFAMS, child-ratings of school wellbeing using the HIFAMS appear unrelated to teacher-ratings, and only very modestly associated with parent-ratings (Allen et al., 2018). Nevertheless, child- and parent-responses to the HIFAMS display similar levels of stability across a 13-month period (Dempsey et al., 2023), indicating that the difference between child and adult perspectives does not reflect poor stability in child ratings.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImportantly for the current study, the degree to which informants cohere when evaluating psychological constructs appears to differ across geographic regions. Coherence is typically greater in regions demonstrating ‘cultural tightness’, that is, strong cultural norms and low tolerance for deviations from these norms (De Los Reyes et al, 2019b; Gefland et al., 2006). For example, in a study based on the World Value Survey that involved 24 countries (N = 38,924) De Los Reyes and colleagues (2019b) found that coherence in cross-informant mental health ratings was stronger in culturally tight contexts (e.g., Singapore, India) than in culturally loose countries (e.g., the Netherlands, Israel). Perhaps unexpectedly, the three sites in the current study mainland China, England and Hong Kong showed similarly medium-level rankings for cultural tightness, indicating that parent-child convergence in school wellbeing may also be similar across these three distinct regions.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSchool Wellbeing Across Geographic Contexts\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePromoting wellbeing is a key global priority across the lifespan (UN, 2015), sparking multi-site studies of school wellbeing in older children that show encouraging levels of consistency across geographic contexts. For example, analysis of the Children’s World study (Rees et al., 2017) showed consistency of wellbeing measurement across almost 95,000 10- and 12-year-olds living in 35 countries (Rees et al., 2018, see also Kim \u0026amp; Main, 2017). Smaller, rich interview-based studies also highlight cross-geographic similarities in children’s perceptions of wellbeing. For example, in an interview study of 53 9 - 12-year-old children living in Wales and the Czech Republic, peer difficulties and disrupted family relations were, in each site, viewed as key threats to wellbeing, whilst supportive relationships were linked with positive wellbeing (Sabolova et al., 2020).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNotably, however, each of the above multi-site studies relied on children older than 8 years of age. Indeed, in a recent systematic review of child wellbeing using different informants, just 22 of 186 studies included assessed wellbeing in children below 11 years of age, with only 4 of these studies examining wellbeing in 5-year-old children and younger (Cho \u0026amp; Yo, 2020). Given that poor wellbeing at the start of schooling (i.e., between 5 and 7 years of age) is known to have lasting impacts on both general wellbeing and academic outcomes (Schlack et al., 2021), the lack of studies that assess young children’s own perceptions of their school wellbeing is striking and may be best explained by the scarcity of developmentally appropriate measures. Evidence that the HIFAMS may be a promising tool for addressing this gap comes from a study of 228 Swedish 5- to 8-year-old children, whose responses to the HIFAMS were similar in structure to that of British children (Riad et al., 2021). While measurement invariance was not formally assessed, the study results do suggest that the HIFAMS is appropriate for use across different educational and geographic contexts.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt this point, some salient contrasts between the three sites in the current study (England, mainland China, Hong Kong) deserve note. The first of these concerns contrasting philosophies regarding early years education. In England, early years education is child-focused and promotes playful learning through free-flow classrooms and a focus on positive relationships (Cheng, Benson, Lau, \u0026amp; Fung, 2009; Watson \u0026amp; Briggs, 2001). By contrast, in mainland China teaching is knowledge-focused and didactic. Both mainland China and Hong Kong are deeply Confucian in their cultural heritage, but Hong Kong was under British Colonial Rule for 156 years (1841-1997), with the 1984 Sino-British agreement stipulating that the British-style economic and social systems would be preserved for 50 years. Adhering to this agreement, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau advocates informal play-based learning in the early years (Chan \u0026amp; Rao, 2024). That said, case-study evidence demonstrates the difficulty of implementing this approach, given the territory’s longstanding tradition of formal, didactic Confucian teaching methods (Humpage, 2020). Thus, from both cultural and educational perspectives, Hong Kong represents an interesting bridge between England and mainland China, enabling our three-site study to go beyond the traditional East-West dichotomy. Alongside this conceptual advance, our proposed study also advances the methodological rigour of research into young children’s school wellbeing by testing for measurement invariance to ensure that scores are conceptually equivalent across these different sites (Stevanovic et al., 2017) and by adopting a multi-informant design that enables benchmarking of site differences against informant contrasts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSchool Wellbeing and Mental Health\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is growing interest in understanding the overlap between children’s wellbeing and poor mental health. Studies of older children and adolescents indicate that wellbeing and poor mental health are distinct but related dimensions with unique predictors and outcomes (Patalay et al., 2016; Lereya et al., 2022). For example, in a large England-based longitudinal cohort study with children between 10 and 14 years of age, two common mental health indicators in childhood and adolescence - parented-rated externalising and internalising problems - were only modestly associated with children’s rating of school wellbeing (Patalay \u0026amp; Fitzsimmons, 2016).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, few studies have examined the association between school wellbeing and mental health in younger children, a critical omission given the transition to formal schooling is often a challenging period for young children (Hughes et al., 2024) and the fact that school wellbeing and mental have specific influences on social and academic outcomes (e.g., Patalay and Fitzsimons, 2016). Of the studies that examine the extent to which school wellbeing and mental health overlap, findings have shown small-to-modest association in English contexts. For example, child-reported school wellbeing (as measured by the HIFAMS) across over 2000 children in England between 5 and 8 years of age only explained a small amount of variance in parent- and teacher-reported mental health (\u003cem\u003er\u003c/em\u003e = -0.11, and -0.17 respectively; Allen et al., 2018, see also, Devine et al., 2025). However, few studies have directly compared the magnitude of the association between school wellbeing and mental health across geographic contexts.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Current Study\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe current study involved three culturally distinct geographic contexts (England, Hong Kong and mainland China) and included both parent and child ratings of school wellbeing. Our first aim was to assess the HIFAMS’s suitability as a measure of school wellbeing across geographic contexts for both child- and parent-report. Based on prior findings (e.g., Riad et al., 2021), we hypothesise that, for both children and parents, the HIFAMS will show similar structure across contexts suggesting its appropriate use across geographic contexts. Our second aim was to examine the agreement between child and parent report of school wellbeing across geographic contexts. Given differences in the perspectives of adults and children noted above and specifically for the HIFAMS (e.g., Allen et al. 2018), in each site we expect to find limited association across child- and parent-reported school wellbeing. Our third aim was to explore individual differences in school wellbeing in relation to child mental health and to assess whether these associations vary by site or informant. Given previous research we expect that school wellbeing will be only modestly negatively associated with child mental health.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven known associations between both school wellbeing and mental health and family adversity (e.g., Newland et al., 2019 although see Morris et al., 2021), we include a broad index of family adversity (including socio-economic status, parental anxiety and depression, and negative family life events) as a covariate in analyses to ensure that effects are not being driven by children’s family environment.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Method","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eParticipants\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eData were drawn from [PROJECT NAME MASKED], a cross-site project examining school readiness and wellbeing among children in England, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Children attending Reception (4\u0026ndash;5 years) or Year 1 (5\u0026ndash;6 years) in England, and Kindergarten Year 2 (4\u0026ndash;5 years) or Kindergarten Year 3 (5\u0026ndash;6 years) in Hong Kong and mainland China, were eligible to participate if they spoke English, Cantonese, or Mandarin, as appropriate to the site, and had no known history of developmental delay.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSite-appropriate recruitment procedures were implemented. In England, recruitment was conducted through schools and nationwide social media advertisements. Children from 22 schools completed assessments via video calls, and parents completed online questionnaires between March and August 2021. In Hong Kong, children were recruited from 29 schools, with child assessments administered via video calls and parent questionnaires completed online between May 2022 and March 2023. In mainland China, children were recruited from 128 schools across more than 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities through kindergartens, online channels (e.g., \u003cem\u003eRedNote\u003c/em\u003e [Xiaohongshu]; a Chinese social media platform loosely comparable to a mix of \u003cem\u003eInstagram\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ePinterest\u003c/em\u003e), and researchers\u0026rsquo; and participants\u0026rsquo; own social networks. Child assessments were conducted via video calls, and parents completed online questionnaires between May 2022 and March 2023. Across the three sites, a total of 1,181 children participated in the study (\u003cem\u003eM\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eage\u003c/sub\u003e = 5.25 years, \u003cem\u003eSD\u003c/em\u003e = 0.53; 49.7% girls; see Table 1 for participant characteristics). Data and code used for this paper can be found on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/auwk9/overview).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eProcedure\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll procedures received favourable reviews from the relevant Research Ethics Committees [MASKED FOR REVIEW]. Across all three sites, informed parental consent was obtained via an online consent form prior to scheduling a video call, during which parents were present while trained graduate researchers administered the school wellbeing measure alongside a 45-minute battery of socio-cognitive tasks not relevant to the current study. Parents completed the parent version of the HIFAMS via an online questionnaire. Families received culturally appropriate tokens of appreciation for participation (\u0026pound;10 vouchers in England, certificates of participation in Hong Kong, and certificates, medals, and trophies in mainland China).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMeasures\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eSchool Wellbeing\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eHow I Feel About My School\u003c/em\u003e (HIFAMS) measure (Allen et al., 2018; https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/hifams/) is a 7-item questionnaire suitable for children aged 4 to 11 years. Each item (listed in Table 2) was read aloud to the child, who then selected a response from three options presented on screen and visualised with cartoon faces showing different expressions (2 = \u003cem\u003ehappy\u003c/em\u003e, 1 = \u003cem\u003eok\u003c/em\u003e, 0 = \u003cem\u003esad\u003c/em\u003e). A second researcher on the call recorded children\u0026rsquo;s responses. The parent-report version of HIFAMS uses a 5-point rating scale (5 = \u003cem\u003every happy\u003c/em\u003e, 4 = \u003cem\u003ehappy\u003c/em\u003e, 3 = \u003cem\u003eneither happy nor unhappy\u003c/em\u003e, 2 = \u003cem\u003eunhappy\u003c/em\u003e, 1 = \u003cem\u003every unhappy\u003c/em\u003e) for the same 7 items as the child-report version.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrevious research has shown that the HIFAMS demonstrates moderate test-retest reliability and internal consistency among British (Allen et al., 2018) and Swedish primary school children (Riad et al., 2021). As our study was the first to administer the HIFAMS during online testing sessions, we examined measurement invariance across online and in-person assessments and found full invariance across assessment modalities highlighting the appropriateness of online administration (see Supplementary Materials and Table S1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe original English version of the questionnaire was used with the English sample. For use in Hong Kong and mainland China, the HIFAMS scale was translated into Cantonese and Mandarin using a multi-forward translation procedure (Erkut, 2010). Three bilingual researchers fluent in both English and Cantonese/Mandarin independently translated the instructions and all items. These translations were then compared, and any discrepancies were resolved with lead researchers across sites. No adaptations in terms of item deletion or re-wording were necessary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven that both child- and parent-rated school wellbeing scores were negatively skewed, and following procedures used in other studies (e.g., Devine et al., 2025), we recoded items into binary indicators prior to analyses. Children\u0026rsquo;s responses were dichotomised by collapsing \u003cem\u003enot happy\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eok\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003einto 0 versus \u003cem\u003ehappy\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ecoded as 1. Parent responses were dichotomised by collapsing \u003cem\u003every unhappy\u003c/em\u003e through \u003cem\u003ehappy\u003c/em\u003e into 0 (i.e., all responses that were not \u0026ldquo;very happy\u0026rdquo;) versus \u003cem\u003every happy\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ecoded as 1. Total scores for both informants ranged between 0 and 7, with higher scores indicating greater school wellbeing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eMental Health\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman et al., 2000) is a widely used, well-validated measure of mental health for children and adolescents aged 3\u0026ndash;16 years. The SDQ has been shown to be appropriate for use across a range of different contexts and countries (e.g., Foley et al., 2021), with favourable psychometric properties (Stone et al., 2015). In addition to the original English-language version (Goodman et al., 2000), we used the Cantonese and Mandarin translations (Lai et al., 2010; Du et al., 2008) in Hong Kong and mainland China. Parents rated how true each of the 20 items was for their child using a 3-point scale (0 = \u003cem\u003enot true\u003c/em\u003e, 1 = \u003cem\u003esomewhat true\u003c/em\u003e, 2 = \u003cem\u003every true\u003c/em\u003e). Ten items from the hyperactivity and conduct problem subscales were summed to give a dimension of externalising problems, with higher scores indicating greater externalising difficulties. Ten items from the emotional and peer problem subscales were summed to give a dimension of internalising problems, with higher scores indicating greater internalising difficulties.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConsistent with prior research using the Chinese version of the SDQ (Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003e\u0026alpha;\u003c/em\u003es = .57\u0026ndash;.69; Wang et al., 2023), internal consistency for the externalising and internalising subscales in the present mainland Chinese sample was modest, Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003e\u0026alpha;\u003c/em\u003es = .56\u0026ndash;.74, highlighting the need for continued cultural adaptation. Following earlier work establishing partial scalar invariance of the SDQ across these three sites (Chen et al., 2025), we removed three items (lies, fights, steals) from the externalising problems dimension and four items (good friend, popularity, best with adults, somatic symptoms) from the internalising problems dimension. These two dimensions then improved internal consistency, Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003e\u0026alpha;\u003c/em\u003es = .63\u0026ndash;.76, and were used to construct a good-fitting two-factor measurement model. Table S2 presents a detailed selection of the SDQ items in modelling the mental health latent factors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eFamily Adversity\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing procedures adopted in other studies (e.g., Heng et al., 2025), we constructed a seven-indicator family adversity index using a data-driven approach. Each indicator (parent education, perceived social standing, family stress, negative life events, non-specific psychological distress, depression, and anxiety) was dummy-coded based on site-specific lower and upper quartiles, and summed to produce a composite score ranging from 0 to 7. Internal consistency for this index was acceptable in each site, Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003e\u0026alpha;\u003c/em\u003es\u0026nbsp;\u0026asymp;\u0026nbsp;.71. Full scoring procedures and descriptive statistics are provided in the Supplementary Materials and Table S3.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnalytic Strategy\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe analysed the data using a latent variable framework in M\u003cem\u003eplus\u003c/em\u003e version 8 (Muth\u0026eacute;n \u0026amp; Muth\u0026eacute;n, 2017). We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to specify measurement models and multiple-groups CFA to establish across-site measurement invariance for child- and parent-rated school wellbeing. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was then used to examine the universality in associations between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing and mental health. Because both the HIFAMS and SDQ used categorical response formats, we adopted a mean- and variance-adjusted weighted least squares estimator (WLSMV; Roos \u0026amp; Bauldry, 2022). To further assess the convergence between child and parental ratings of school wellbeing, we conducted a single-paper meta-analysis (McShane \u0026amp; B\u0026ouml;ckenholt, 2017) using a random-effects model implemented in the \u003cem\u003eR\u003c/em\u003e packages \u003cem\u003erobumeta\u003c/em\u003e (Fisher \u0026amp; Tipton, 2015), \u003cem\u003emetafor\u003c/em\u003e (Viechtbauer, 2010), and \u003cem\u003edplyr\u003c/em\u003e (Wickham et al., 2024). Plots were produced in \u003cem\u003eR\u003c/em\u003e using the \u003cem\u003etidyverse\u003c/em\u003e package (Wickham et al., 2019) to create summary plots and the \u003cem\u003eHmisc\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(Harrell et al., 2024), \u003cem\u003ecorrplot\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(Wei et al., 2024), and \u003cem\u003eRColorBrewer\u003c/em\u003e (Neuwirth, 2022)\u0026nbsp;packages to create the correlation heatmap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe evaluated model fit using three commonly recommended criteria: a root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) of \u0026lt; 0.08, a comparative fit index (CFI) of \u0026gt; 0.90, and a Tucker\u0026ndash;Lewis index (TLI) of \u0026gt; 0.90 (Brown, 2015). In nested model comparisons, we used a significant increase in \u003cem\u003e\u0026chi;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e to evaluate changes in model fit (Brown, 2015). Given a small amount of unplanned missingness we applied a default full information approach in M\u003cem\u003eplus\u003c/em\u003e to retain all available cases in the analyses (Muth\u0026eacute;n \u0026amp; Muth\u0026eacute;n, 2017). Unlike listwise deletion or mean replacement, this approach does not require assumptions of multivariate normality or completely random missingness and yields less biased parameter estimates and standard errors (Enders, 2001). Participant demographics (child age and gender) and family adversity were included as covariates in analyses.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDescriptive Statistics\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 2 presents descriptive statistics for binary-scored school wellbeing items and total scores by informant and site (raw-score descriptives are provided in Table S4). Table S5 presents the means, standard deviations, ranges, and distribution coefficients for the raw scores of main study measures in the whole sample. Figure 1 shows item-level means for the binary-scored school wellbeing items in each site, plotted separately for child and parent report. Although the overall pattern of item rankings was broadly similar across sites (e.g., item 4, “at the playground,” generally received higher child ratings), several site-specific differences emerged. For example, compared with parents in Hong Kong and mainland China, English parents tended to give higher ratings on item 3, “doing work,” \u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(2) = 47.04, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .001, Cramer’s \u003cem\u003eV\u003c/em\u003e = .205, and item 7, “think about school,” \u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(2) = 41.70, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .001, Cramer’s \u003cem\u003eV\u003c/em\u003e = .193.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePartial Scalar Invariance of Child- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe began by testing the fit of a measurement model in which all child-rated school wellbeing items loaded onto one single wellbeing latent factor, both in the whole sample and within each site. Modification indices indicated correlated residuals between item 3 (“doing work”) and item 6 (“think about teacher”), suggesting additional shared variance between these closely related indicators beyond what was accounted for by the latent factor (Brown, 2015). These correlated residuals were therefore included in subsequent models. In the whole sample, this one-factor model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.049, 90% CI [0.035, 0.064], CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.970.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe across-site measurement invariance of the one-factor structure for school wellbeing was examined by imposing progressively stricter constraints on the model (Brown, 2015). A comprehensive summary of comparing model fit indices is shown in Table 3. In the \u003cem\u003epartial scalar invariant\u003c/em\u003e model where two thresholds (items 2 and 5) were freely estimated in the English sample, constraining all remaining thresholds and all factor loadings to be equal across sites did not significantly reduce model fit, relative to the less parsimonious \u003cem\u003econfigural invariant\u003c/em\u003e model, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e\u003csup\u003e2\u0026nbsp;\u003c/sup\u003e(20) = 25.95, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .167.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe adopted the same stepwise procedure to establish the measurement model and to test across-site measurement invariance of parent-rated school wellbeing (see Table 3). Modification indices indicated correlated residuals among all items, suggesting additional shared variance across indicators beyond what was accounted for by the latent factor (Brown, 2015). These correlated residuals were therefore included in subsequent models. In the whole sample, this one-factor model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.058, 90% CI [0.042, 0.075], CFI = 0.992, TLI = 0.983. In the \u003cem\u003epartial scalar invariant\u003c/em\u003e model, three thresholds (items 3, 4, and 7) were freely estimated in the English sample, and three thresholds (items 3, 4, and 5) were freely estimated in the mainland Chinese sample. Constraining all remaining thresholds and all factor loadings to equality across sites did not significantly reduce model fit, relative to the less parsimonious \u003cem\u003econfigural invariant\u003c/em\u003e model, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e\u003csup\u003e2\u0026nbsp;\u003c/sup\u003e(16) = 17.47, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .356. In sum, both the child-reported and parent-reported school wellbeing latent factors exhibited partial scalar invariance, with equal form, equal loadings, and partially equal thresholds in all three sites, highlighting the appropriateness of the measures for use across these geographic contexts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNext, we examined site differences in child- and parent-rated school wellbeing. Constraining the latent means to be equal across sites did not significantly degrade model fit for either child-reported school wellbeing, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(2) = 3.88, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .144, or parent-reported school wellbeing, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(2) = 1.92, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .383. Findings remained even when covariates (child age, child gender, and family adversity) were included in the models: child report, RMSEA = 0.021, 90% CI [0, 0.034], CFI = 0.990, TLI = 0.989; parent report, RMSEA = 0.046, 90% CI [0.035, 0.057], CFI = 0.986, TLI = 0.983. Taken together, analyses indicate that, for both child- and parent-report, the HIFAMS measure of school wellbeing functions equivalently across the three geographic regions group with no mean-level differences in school wellbeing across sites.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAssociations Between Child- and Parent-Rated School Wellbeing\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBuilding on the partial scalar invariant models, we applied multiple-groups SEM to examine cross-site consistency in associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing. To adjust for demographic and contextual variability, both the child- and parent-reported wellbeing latent factors were regressed onto child age, child gender, and family adversity, with the two latent factors freely covarying. The model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = 0.031, 90% CI [0.023, 0.037], CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.980. All indicators loaded significantly onto their respective latent factors: .54–.82 for child-rated items and .62–.91 for parent-rated items across sites. As shown in Figure 2, child and parent ratings of school wellbeing showed a small but significant positive association in England, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u003c/em\u003e = .16, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .016, and Hong Kong, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u003c/em\u003e = .16, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .047, whereas this association was not observed in the mainland China.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo test if the association between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing was invariant across sites, an equality constraint was placed on the covariance between the two latent factors. This model fitted the data well, RMSEA = 0.029, 90% CI [0.022, 0.036], CFI = 0.983, TLI = 0.981, and did not statistically deviate from the unconstrained model, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(2) = 3.15, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .207, demonstrating that the strength of associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing was comparable in magnitude across the three sites (despite differences in statistical significance).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe corroborated the consistency of the association across school wellbeing informants using a single-paper meta-analysis (SPM). As shown in Figure 3, the SPM revealed low heterogeneity in the strength of associations between child- and parent-reported school wellbeing after controlling for demographic and contextual variability, \u003cem\u003eQ\u003c/em\u003e(2) = 3.08, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .214. A low-to-moderate proportion of the observed variability in estimates may nonetheless reflect genuine heterogeneity rather than sampling/measurement errors, \u003cem\u003eI\u003c/em\u003e² = 35.08%. Even so, the SPM confirmed that a positive association between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing was statistically significant and highly consistent in each site, with a summary estimate of 0.11, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .041, 95% CI [0.005, 0.212].\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAssociations Between School Wellbeing and Mental Health\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing the same stepwise procedure, we established partial scalar invariance for a two-factor (i.e., internalising and externalising problems) mental health model across the three sites (Chen et al., 2025). After controlling for covariates (child age and gender and family adversity), no site-level differences in latent means were observed for parent-reported internalising or externalising problems (see Supplementary Materials and Table S6). Table 4 presents heatmaps of zero-order correlations among the main study measures in each site.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimilarly, building on these established partial scalar invariant models, we conducted multiple-groups SEM to examine cross-site consistency in associations between school wellbeing, as rated by children and parents, and parent-reported mental health. The two mental health latent factors were allowed to covary freely and were regressed onto child-rated school wellbeing in one model and parent-rated wellbeing in a separate model. All latent factors were also regressed onto the covariates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe model provided an acceptable fit to the data for child-reported school wellbeing (see Figure 4), RMSEA = 0.035, 90% CI [0.030, 0.039], CFI = 0.957, TLI = 0.954, and for parent-reported school wellbeing (see Figure 5), RMSEA = 0.050, 90% CI [0.046, 0.054], CFI = 0.943, TLI = 0.937. Children’s ratings of school wellbeing were significantly and inversely associated with internalising problems in England,\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Std.Est\u003c/em\u003e = -.22, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .004, but not in Hong Kong or mainland China. In contrast, across all three sites, parents’ ratings of school wellbeing were significantly and inversely associated with externalising problems, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eENG\u003c/sub\u003e = -.33, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eHK\u003c/sub\u003e = -.27, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eMC\u003c/sub\u003e = -.27, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003es \u0026lt; .001, and internalising problems, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eENG\u003c/sub\u003e = -.46, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt; .001, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eHK\u003c/sub\u003e = -.21, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .007, \u003cem\u003eStd.Est\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eMC\u003c/sub\u003e = -.19, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .005.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImposing equality constraints on the regression paths linking school wellbeing with internalising and externalising problems resulted in a nonsignificant decrement in model fit for either informant: child-reported HIFAMS, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(4) = 6.08, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .193; parent-reported HIFAMS, Δ\u003cem\u003eχ\u003c/em\u003e²(4) = 8.66, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .067. These findings imply that the strengths of associations between child- and parent-rated school wellbeing and mental health are broadly comparable across the three sites.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe current study aimed to (i) evaluate the applicability of the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) school wellbeing measure across different geographic contexts (i.e., England, Hong Kong and mainland China), (ii) examine child and parent perspectives of school wellbeing, and (iii) explore associations between school wellbeing and mental health. In doing so, the study makes a substantive conceptual and methodological contribution by providing the first multi-site, cross-cultural evaluation of a child self-report school wellbeing measure in early childhood.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough the HIFAMS school wellbeing measure has previously been validated within single-country European contexts (Allen et al., 2018; Riad et al., 2021), no prior work has tested whether young children across markedly different cultural and educational settings interpret and respond to this measure in comparable ways. The current study has demonstrated that the HIFAMS shows partial scalar invariance across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China for both child- and parent-reported versions, representing a critical advance, establishing that the HIFAMS captures a broadly equivalent construct of school wellbeing across diverse contexts. This is particularly important given the ongoing scarcity of developmentally appropriate self-report measures for children under seven years of age (Cho \u0026amp; Yo, 2020).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross all three sites, the HIFAMS showed a highly consistent one-factor structure, reinforcing prior evidence that young children conceptualise school wellbeing in broadly similar unified way across different early education systems (Riad et al., 2021). One notable psychometric feature was the residual association between the items \u0026ldquo;doing work\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;thinking about the teacher,\u0026rdquo; which emerged consistently across sites. This pattern suggests that, for young children, academic activities may be experienced as closely intertwined with their relationship with the teacher. Existing research highlights the central role of teacher\u0026ndash;child relationships in shaping motivation, emotional security, and perceptions of competence (Givvin et al., 2001). Our findings extend this literature by suggesting that, at the start of formal schooling, children\u0026rsquo;s affective responses to learning tasks may be scaffolded by their feelings toward their teacher, a hypothesis that warrants further work examining pedagogical style and relational classroom climates.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDespite substantial differences in educational philosophy and practice across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, we found no mean-level differences in school wellbeing for either child or parent reports. This finding challenges common assumptions that more didactic early education systems necessarily compromise children\u0026rsquo;s subjective wellbeing and aligns with eudaimonic perspectives emphasising that purpose, engagement, and positive relationships can coexist with academic learning (Clarke, 2020; O\u0026rsquo;Shaughnessy, 2015).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec20\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eChild and Parent Perceptions of School Wellbeing\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe current study also leveraged the multi-informant design to examine convergence and divergence between children\u0026rsquo;s and parents\u0026rsquo; perspectives of school wellbeing. This is a crucial step for the field, as initiatives that rely exclusively on adult reports risk overlooking dimensions of school experience that are most salient to children themselves (Fattore et al., 2019; O\u0026rsquo;Farrelly et al., 2020).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eConsistent with earlier work using the HIFAMS (Allen et al., 2018; Dempsey et al., 2023), associations between parent and child ratings of school wellbeing were small but reliable, and importantly, comparable across all three sites. Parents tended to overestimate children\u0026rsquo;s happiness in the classroom and underestimate their child\u0026rsquo;s happiness in the playground and when thinking about the teacher, a pattern that replicated acrossall three geographic contexts. One possible explanation is that children are more likely to communicate negative playground experiences to parents, whereas positive or routine classroom experiences, and especially affective experiences linked to teachers, may be less frequently discussed at home. Developmental factors may also play a role, as parent\u0026ndash;child agreement on school wellbeing appears to increase with age (e.g., Dempsey et al., 2023), highlighting that early discrepancies reflect differences in perspective rather than poor reliability of child self-report.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec21\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eSchool Wellbeing and Mental Health\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross all three sites, parent-rated school wellbeing was robustly associated with parent-rated internalising and externalising difficulties, reflecting strong within-informant convergence across school wellbeing and mental health. By contrast, child-rated school wellbeing showed no association with parent-rated internalising or externalising problems, with one exception: in the English sample, lower child-reported school wellbeing was linked to higher parent-rated internalising problems. This isolated association may reflect greater parental sensitivity to children\u0026rsquo;s internal emotional states in the English context, or cultural differences in the salience and communication of emotional distress. Overall, however, the findings align with prior work showing that child self-report of school wellbeing capture dimensions of experience that are not well indexed by adult reports of mental health (Allen et al., 2018; Patalay \u0026amp; Fitzsimons, 2016).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec22\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eStrengths, Limitations, and Future Directions\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study benefits from several notable strengths, including recruitment across three culturally and educationally distinct sites, the inclusion of both child and parent informants, and the use of rigorous psychometric methods to establish cross-site measurement invariance of school wellbeing. Incorporating measures of mental health allowed us to situate school wellbeing within a broader developmental context, and the use of multi-group structural equation modelling and single-paper meta-analytic techniques strengthened the robustness and interpretability of cross-site comparisons.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNonetheless, several limitations should also be acknowledged. Remote data collection precluded direct observation of classroom environments, limiting insight into how specific pedagogical practices shape school wellbeing. Additionally, the dichotomisation of HIFAMS responses, while psychometrically justified, may obscure meaningful variability among the smaller proportion of children with lower levels of school wellbeing. Finally, the cross-sectional design restricts conclusions about developmental change. Longitudinal research is needed to examine whether parent\u0026ndash;child convergence in school wellbeing increases similarly across cultural contexts and whether early school wellbeing predicts later academic and mental health outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusions","content":"\u003cp\u003eBy establishing that the HIFAMS school wellbeing measure functions equivalently across England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, this study provides the first rigorous evidence that young children\u0026rsquo;s self-reported school wellbeing can be meaningfully compared across diverse cultural contexts. The findings underscore the robustness and utility of the HIFAMS as a multi-informant tool and highlight the importance of foregrounding children\u0026rsquo;s own perspectives in research on early school experiences.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Taken together, current findings reinforce the argument that parents are not necessarily optimal proxies for children\u0026rsquo;s school wellbeing, particularly in early childhood. Children\u0026rsquo;s report on their own school experience provide unique and valid information that cannot be inferred from parental assessments of school wellbeing or mental health alone. Initiatives that assess school wellbeing without incorporating children\u0026rsquo;s own perspectives therefore risk misplacing supports and interventions (Pollard et al., 2003; Hughes, Dempsey, \u0026amp; Fink, 2024). We hope this work encourages wider adoption of child-friendly school wellbeing measures and supports future research aimed at understanding how educational andcultural, contexts jointly shape children\u0026rsquo;s school wellbeing at the start of formal schooling.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAllen, K., Marlow, R., Edwards, V., Parker, C., Rodgers, L., Ukoumunne, O. C., Seem, E. C., Hayes, R., Price, A. \u0026amp; Ford, T. (2018). ‘How I Feel About My School’: The construction and validation of a measure of wellbeing at school for primary school children. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 23(1), 25-41.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBambha, V. P., \u0026amp; Casasola, M. (2021). From Lab to Zoom: Adapting Training Study Methodologies to Remote Conditions, Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 694728.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBen-Arieh, A., \u0026amp; Tarshish, N. (2016). Children’s rights and well-being. 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(2022). Relationships between school enjoyment, social integration, and achievement at the beginning of primary school: Does family background matter? European Journal of Psychology and Educational Research, 5(2), 127-143. https://doi.org/10.12973/ejper.5.2.127\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAyano, G., Lin, A., Dachew, B. A., Tait, R., Betts, K., \u0026amp; Alati, R. (2022). The impact of parental mental health problems on the educational outcomes of their offspring: Findings from the Raine Study. Australian \u0026amp; New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 56(5), 510-524.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eLui, M., Lau, G. K., Tam, V. C., Chiu, H. M., Li, S. S., \u0026amp; Sin, K. F. (2020). Parents’ impact on children’s school performance: Marital satisfaction, parental involvement, and mental health. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29, 1548-1560.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eFattore, T., Fegter, S., \u0026amp; Hunner-Kreisel, C. (2019). Children’s understandings of well-being in global and local contexts: Theoretical and methodological considerations for a multinational qualitative study. Child Indicators Research, 12, 385-407.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Tables","content":"\u003cp\u003eTables 1 to 4 are available in the supplementary files section\u003c/p\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"School wellbeing, school enjoyment, cross-cultural, mental health","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8670511/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8670511/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eChildren’s positive feelings about their school experience plays a key role in early socio-emotional and academic development, yet research with young children has been constrained by the limited availability of developmentally appropriate self-report measures of school wellbeing. Capitalising on the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) measure, the present multi-informant study examined early school wellbeing in 1,060 children (M age = 5.19 years, SD = 0.59; 47.7% girls) across three culturally and educationally distinct contexts: England, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, the cross-site measurement invariance of child- and parent-reported school wellbeing scores was examined. Results demonstrated partial scalar invariance across all three sites for both child- and parent-reported school wellbeing, indicating that the assessment of school wellbeing was comparable across geographic contexts. Latent mean comparisons revealed no significant site differences in either child- or parent-rated school wellbeing. Associations between child and parent ratings of school wellbeing were small but consistent across sites. Parent-rated but not child-rated school wellbeing was consistently negatively associated with parent-rated mental health across all sites. Together, these findings provide robust evidence that young children’s self-reported school wellbeing can be meaningfully compared across diverse geographic contexts and highlight the importance of incorporating children’s own perspectives when assessing early school experiences.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Associations between early school wellbeing and mental health in England, mainland China and Hong Kong","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-02-02 05:27:20","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8670511/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"9701edad-9a97-47e2-9411-732ea21c9c46","owner":[],"postedDate":"February 2nd, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-02-02T05:27:21+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-02-02 05:27:20","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8670511","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8670511","identity":"rs-8670511","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}