Exploring and explaining changes in secondary students’ well-being at school: a person-centered approach by applying latent transition analysis

‘Well-being at school’ is a multidimensional construct whose expression is determined by the cognitive evaluation of student experiences, the affective and physical expressions thereof, and accompanying social phenomena. School well-being is affected by individual and contextual factors. The study aimed to explore whether a classification of students (N = 1343, average age: M = 10.19, SD = 0.48; 80.7% female, 25.7% with a migration biography, 51.5% on the medium educational track) remains stable to several latent profiles at the beginning of secondary school, or whether their profiles change over the course of a school year. A latent transition analysis (LTA) was carried out for this purpose. The results show that the least favourable of the four identified profiles, which has a comparatively higher number of boys and students with a migration biography, is the least stable. Furthermore, the quality of social relationships is associated with more favourable profile transitions: Students who perceive more positive social relationships are more often assigned or transition to profiles that reflect high levels of school well-being. Students’ academic achievement is also associated with the probability of transitioning profiles, although the effects are relatively small and heterogeneous.