School-related internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors and their associations with subjective well-being among Chinese children and adolescents: a network analysis.

Authors

Meihua Wang, Xinrui Yin, Wendi Kong, Xiangyu Chen

Published in

BMC psychology. Volume 14. Issue 1. Jul 31, 2026. Epub Jul 31, 2026.

Abstract

Internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors frequently co-occur among children and adolescents and are associated with their subjective well-being (SWB). However, the symptom-level interactions underlying this co-occurrence remain unclear. Grounded in a network analysis framework, this study investigated the conditional associations among these school-related problem behaviors and their associations with SWB. Data were drawn from 2,049 students in the 2022 wave of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We estimated indicator networks to identify functionally central and bridging indicators, and constructed a directed acyclic graph (DAG) via Bayesian networks to explore probabilistic dependencies. Additionally, network comparison methods were utilized to evaluate structural invariance across gender, urban-rural residency, and educational stages. We employed flow functions to trace direct and indirect associational links with SWB. The results revealed that IPB5 "worry about homework", IPB4 "worry about performance", and IPB6 "worry about playmates" emerged as the central symptoms within the network. Furthermore, EPB1 "argue with peers", IPB2 "fear of exams", and EPB3 "difficulty completing" acted as key bridge symptoms connecting the two domains. While the overall network structure remained stable across genders, significant structural disparities were observed between urban and rural students. Across educational subgroups, the relative prominence of core and bridge symptoms varied. These findings offer a descriptive characterization of symptom co-occurrence patterns within the Chinese educational context. The prominence of academic- and peer-related worries within this network points to candidate indicators that future longitudinal and intervention research may examine.

PMID:
42907940
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Oct 2026.

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