Students’ Emotion Regulation and School-Related Wellbeing: Longitudinal Models Juxtaposing Between- and Within-Person Perspectives

There is a lack of research examining how students’ emotion regulation is linked to their wellbeing at school. To address this gap in the current literature, we examined reciprocal relations between two important emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) and school-related wellbeing over 12 months across two school years. We collected data from 2,365 secondary and upper secondary students in England (aged 11-19 years) across three waves. Juxtaposing between-person and within-person perspectives, we used a tripartite (three-part) latent cross-lagged panel model (CLPM), and a tripartite latent random intercept-cross lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to examine the directional ordering of the two strategies and wellbeing over time. Both the CLPM and RI-CLPM showed that reappraisal and school-related wellbeing were reciprocally related. Reappraisal positively predicted school-related wellbeing, and school-related wellbeing positively predicted reappraisal. Reappraisal also negatively predicted subsequent suppression, but not vice versa. Suppression and school-related wellbeing were not linked. Findings inform the design of intervention research in schools and colleges by highlighting the importance of cognitive reappraisal in the school-related wellbeing of adolescents.