Longitudinal reciprocal relationships between self-esteem, family support, and life satisfaction in Korean multicultural adolescents

This study examines longitudinal reciprocal relationships between self-esteem, family support, and life satisfaction in Korean multicultural adolescents to draw implications for human service practice and policy. It uses data from the second (2012), fourth (2014), and sixth (2016) Waves of Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study (MAPS), which included 1,307 multicultural adolescents. For the study, the authors used an autoregressive cross-lagged model to test longitudinal relationships between the variables. The results show that self-esteem, family support, and life satisfaction were stable over a 4-year period and that they were mutually and positively significant, except for life satisfaction, which did not show any effect on family support in the fourth and sixth waves. The findings suggest that human service agencies, including school social work services and Multicultural Family Support centers, may develop programs to enhance self-esteem, family support systems, and life satisfaction for Korean multicultural adolescents.