School Size, School Type, and Adolescent Mental Health

Overview of Watt's Study

Watt's article explores the connection between school organization and adolescents' mental health. There is a commonly held belief that adolescents receive a superior educational and interpersonal experience in private schools and small schools. Watt cites studies by Coleman and others that have given support to the perceived superiority of private schools. Coleman's findings in support of private schools did not, however, address mental health; they were instead limited to academic achievement.

Watt's questions — "Are private schools better not only for academic achievement but for mental health? Are small schools associated with broad indicators of emotional well-being?" (2003, p. 345) — form the basis for her study. Watt's study addresses these issues by examining three indicators of adolescents' emotional adjustment: depression, suicide attempts, and violent dispositions.

Watt's study analyzed data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which surveyed health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7–12. The survey measured depression using the "feelings scale," consisting of 19 questions that addressed how often adolescents felt sad, depressed, lonely, fearful, and so forth. The survey measured suicidality by number of suicide attempts and measured violence by a question about the use or threat of use of a weapon.

The study was designed to examine multiple indicators of mental health because males and females often exhibit distress in different ways — externalized versus internalized. Watt justified the study design by citing a study by Pearlin that found that "females tend to internalize their stress and become depressed, while males tended to externalize their stress and become aggressive" (2003, p. 349).

Key Findings on Emotional Adjustment

Watt's study also took into account independent variables such as school characteristics, socioeconomic status, community and neighborhood influences, intact family status, and peer relations. With respect to depression, her results showed that males who attend small schools have higher levels of depression than males attending large schools, while school size had no effect on females' depression levels. The study also found that males who attend small schools were almost four times more likely to have attempted suicide in the past year than were males who attended large schools, while school size and sector did not affect female suicide attempts. The study showed that both males and females who attended private religious schools were more likely to have used or threatened to use a weapon in the past year.

Overall, the study did not support arguments that private schools and small schools were beneficial to adolescents' emotional adjustment, finding instead that they may actually be detrimental to adolescents' mental health. Watt explained this observation by noting that the unique needs of adolescents as they struggle to construct an identity are more easily met in large and/or public schools.

Watt concluded the article by citing several studies that show evidence of a relationship between school size and academic accomplishment, which have been used to determine governmental and educational policy. These studies did not, however, investigate a relationship between school size and mental health. Watt's study suggests that policy choices in favor of small and/or private schools may not "necessarily be conducive to emotional adjustment and, in some cases, may actually be harmful to adolescents' mental health" (2003, p. 364). She calls for additional research because "we need to know whether choices that are conducive to emotional stability are at odds with those that promote academic achievement" (2003, p. 364).

Works Cited

Watt, T. T. (2003). Are small schools and private schools better for adolescents' emotional adjustment? Sociology of Education, 76(4), 344–367.