Author Information
Septian Cahyo, Center for Educational Assessment, IndonesiaSiti Raudlah, Center for Educational Assessment, Indonesia
Januar Pribadi, Center for Educational Assessment, Indonesia
Abstract
Well-being has become an important factor that contributes to students’ mental health. Since prior studies suggested that a safe school environment significantly increases students’ well-being, this study aims to investigate the effects of student’s safety experience at school, reflected by being safe from bullying, sexual abuse, and physical punishment, on their perceived well-being, and how these relationships are moderated by specific school characteristics that includes geographic location, school status, and school type. Using data from 27,154 high schools in the 2024 Indonesian National Assessment, the results showed that safety experience was positively associated with students’ well-being, where safety from bullying became the strongest predictor, followed by safety from physical punishment and sexual abuse. These results suggest that the safer a school environment is, the higher the quality of students’ well-being becomes. A follow-up analysis using multiple regression with interaction terms revealed that the effects of being safe from bullying on well-being were significantly different across school characteristics, where the impacts were stronger for urban and public schools compared with rural and private schools, but weaker for vocational compared with general high schools. While the effects of sexual abuse on well-being was significantly moderated by school status, the effects of safety from physical punishment varied significantly across geographic location and school type. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, along with the limitations and suggestions for future studies.
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