Perceived Social Support and Psychological Distress as the Mediating and Moderating Factors on Individuals’ Well-being and Life Satisfaction
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Abstract
Introduction: Life satisfaction constitutes a crucial aspect of an individual’s health and well-being. It is a worldwide concern due to the significant impact on individuals’ psychological development. The current quantitative study aims to bridge the literature gap by proposing a research model to assess the mediating effect of perceived social support on the relationship between well-being and life satisfaction. Simultaneously, the moderating impact of psychological distress on the model was appraised among Malaysian adults. Materials and methods: TA questionnaire was administered to collect data from a total of 201 adults through four measurement scales. The data were analysed on both SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 23.0 software. Results:The results discovered that 62.7% of the participants achieved a high well-being level, followed by 58.2% with a high perceived social support, 53.7% with psychological distress, and 51.7% with high life satisfaction. Significant impacts of well-being and perceived social support were also revealed on life satisfaction, with perceived social support mediating the association between well-being and life satisfaction and psychological distress moderating the model. Total 51% variance of adults’ life satisfaction was explained by the proposed model. A direct effect of adults’ well-being (0.56) higher than the indirect effect (0.11) with the total model effect as 0.67. Conclusion: The proposed model was corroborated by indicating the importance of well-being, perceived social support, and psychological distress in Malaysian adults’ life satisfaction. The study recommended effective strategies to increase individuals’ life satisfaction and demonstrated the significance of improving public well-being, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.
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