Investigating the mediating role of positive adolescent development in the relationship between social competence, academic well-being and academic buoyancy in the second year students of the second secondary school in Behbahan city

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of positive adolescent development in the relationship between social competence, academic well-being, and academic buoyancy in the second-year students of the second secondary school in Behbahan City. The method of this study was descriptive-correlational using the structural equation modeling method. The statistical population included all secondary school students in Behbahan city in the academic year of 21021-2022 and 580 students were selected by multistage random sampling method. To collect data, the Academic Well-Being Questionnaire (AWBQ, Tuominen-Soini et al., 2012), the Academic Buoyancy Questionnaire (ABQ, Dehghanizadeh and Hossein Chari, 2012), the Social Competence Scale (SCS, Felner et al., 1990) and Positive Youth Development Scale (PYDS, Geldof et al., 2014) were used. The findings showed that the coefficients of social competency pathways to positive adolescent development, academic well-being, and academic buoyancy were positive and significant (p<0.05). The findings of indirect relationships indicated that social competence indirectly had a significant effect on academic well-being and academic buoyancy through positive adolescent development (p<0.05). Accordingly, positive adolescent development has a mediating role between social competence and academic well-being, as well as between social competence and academic buoyancy. Therefore, positive adolescent development has a key role in the relationship between social competence and academic well-being, and between social competence and academic buoyancy, so it can be concluded that social competence influences academic well-being and academic buoyancy in students by affecting positive adolescent development.