A systematic narrative review of subjective well-being promotion intervention programmes in the school setting

Given the growing number of interventions aimed at promoting well-being in the school setting, this narrative review sought to synthesise available evidence about the characteristics of the interventions: theoretical components, evaluation designs and their reported results. Two electronic databases (EBSCO and Scopus) were searched, and articles published between 2015 and 2020 were included. A total of 1477 articles were identified from these search engines and based on the systematic scrutinising process a total of 55 articles were included in the review. Only one-third of the studies employed experimental, causal designs. Therefore, the review is unable to make conclusive statements about promising approaches, Nevertheless, the results show that the majority of interventions used to promote school children's well-being were based on positive psychology, most of which were focused on promoting positive emotions. The studies reviewed also suggest that longer interventions, with a higher number of sessions, which are targeted at multiple components of positive emotions are more likely to yield positive results. Almost all these studies were carried out in developed countries, with only one empirical work in Latin America. Therefore, more robust experimental studies using causal designs are needed, and more empirical work is needed in low- and middle-income countries on effective practices in developing children's subjective well-being.