POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, SATISFACTION AND PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR MODEL AMONGST MALAYSIAN YOUTH POPULATION

Youth are perceived to be an important resource/manpower to sustain the nation's continuous development and growth to drive the nation forward and becoming a developed country by the year 2020. positive youth development initiatives are deemed necessary to support the nation's aspiration for healthy, happy and competent adolescent. promoting positive development among youth will lead them to thrive and make positive contributions to self, family, community and civil society. subjective quality of life is defined as the overall self-reported life satisfaction of an individual. life satisfaction is the subjective measure of quality of life referring to individuals' internal judgement of their overall lives and/or specific life domains, such as satisfaction with friends, family and school experiences. many life-satisfaction studies appeared to be negatively associated with adolescent problem behaviours. problem behaviour incidents amongst youth do not contribute positively to community and civil society well being and are associated with life dissatisfaction. efforts should be undertaken to address problem behaviour among youth as it is reported to increase dramatically during adolescence compared to during childhood. therefore, this study is conducted to develop and validate the proposed hypothesised model, identify the effect of positive youth development as predicting factors on youth life satisfaction and problem behaviour, examine the effect of life satisfaction on problem behaviour, explore areas of improvement in the different aspects of positive youth development and recommend interventions programmes. hence, the findings of this study would be able to propose a model of positive youth development, quality of life and problem behaviour, identify the predicting factors of youth life satisfaction and problem behaviour, suggest areas of improvements in the different aspects of positive youth development and recommend intervention programmes/strategies to reduce problem behaviour amongst the youth population in malaysia.