Test of the social cognitive model of well-being in Portuguese and Brazilian college students

Lent and Brown's (2006, 2008) social cognitive model of work well-being was tested in Brazilian (N = 349) and Portuguese (N = 357) college student samples. Participants completed Portuguese language measures of academic domain self-efficacy, environmental support, goal progress, and satisfaction, along with measures of global positive affect and life satisfaction. Results of latent variable path analyses indicated that the model fit the data well in the full sample as well as in separate sub-samples by country and gender. The model also accounted for substantial portions of the variance in academic and overall life satisfaction, and nearly all of the path coefficients were statistically significant. Contrary to expectations, however, goal progress did not contribute uniquely to the prediction of either academic domain or global life satisfaction. We consider implications of the findings for research and practice on the social cognitive well-being model.