Longitudinal data from 1,057 adolescents in 19 public schools indicated that self-assessments of physical health were influenced by competence in several important areas of adolescent life and by psychological well-being, but not by physical symptoms. Specifically, adolescents who reported higher levels of school achievement and more participation in sports and other exercise assessed their health to be better over a one-year period, when we controlled for initial self-assessments, than those who reported lower achievement and less participation. Physical health status, as measured by common physical symptoms, was associated cross-sectionally with self-assessed health, but its longitudinal effect was mediated by initial levels of self-assessed health. Other longitudinal results showed that adolescents who were initially less depressed assessed their health more positively. The inclination among adolescents to associate competence and psychological well-being with self-assessed physical health may contribute to the expression of distress in somatic terms later in life, and may help explain this commonly observed pattern among adults.
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