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Student health and wellbeing: A systematic review of intervention research examining effective student wellbeing in schools and their academic outcomes. Main report and executive summary.
Wellbeing
  • Katherine Dix, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Syeda Kashfee Ahmed, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Toby Carslake, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Shani Sniedze, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Elizabeth O'Grady, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Jenny Trevitt, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Publication Date
9-1-2020
Subjects
Academic achievement, Health promotion, Persistence, Research, Resilience (Personality), Social behaviour, Student engagement, Systematic reviews, Well being
Comments

This project was commissioned and funded by the Evidence for Learning (E4L) and VicHealth.

Study registration: PROSPERO CRD42020176599, 28/04/2020, www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd

Abstract

This review explored the research regarding the effects of school-based wellbeing interventions on student academic achievement (N = 320,505) and the wellbeing-related outcomes (N = 411,535) of social-emotional adjustment, behavioural adjustment, cognitive adjustment, and internalising symptoms. There were 75 studies that qualified and were included in the final analyses which involved 432 extracted outcomes from students 5 to 18 years of age. This review found that school-based wellbeing programs had a small positive effect on academic achievement, equivalent to two months of additional impact (g = 0.17). Wellbeing programs had small to moderate effects on wellbeing-related measures: social-emotional adjustment (g = 0.14), behavioural adjustment (g = 0.15) , cognitive adjustment (g = 0.18), and a moderate impact on internalising symptoms (g = 0.20) compared to 'business as usual', consistent with previous reviews.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Place of Publication
Sydney, Australia
Publisher
Evidence for Learning
ISBN
978-1-74286-608-6
Citation Information
Dix, K., Ahmed, S. K., Carslake, T., Sniedze-Gregory, S., O’Grady, E., & Trevitt, J. (2020). Student health and wellbeing: A systematic review of intervention research examining effective student wellbeing in schools and their academic outcomes. Main report and executive summary. Evidence for Learning. https://www.evidenceforlearning.org.au/assets/Uploads/Main-Report-Student-Health-and-Wellbeing-Systematic-Review-FINAL-25-Sep-2020.pdf