Social cognitive predictors of well-being in African college students

• Tested the social cognitive well-being model in African college students
• Path analyses indicated that the model provided good overall fit to the data.
• Model fit was invariant across gender and across samples from two different countries.
• The model explained large portions of the variance in both academic and life satisfaction.
• The findings add to the understanding of the cross-cultural validity of the well-being model in educational and work contexts.

Lent and Brown's (2006, 2008) social cognitive model of work well-being was tested in two samples of African college students, one from Angola (N = 241) and one from Mozambique (N = 425). Participants completed domain-specific measures of academic self-efficacy, environmental support, goal progress, and satisfaction, along with measures of global positive affect and life satisfaction. Path analyses indicated that the model fit the data well overall, both in the full sample and in separate sub-samples by country and gender. Contrary to expectations, however, self-efficacy predicted academic satisfaction only indirectly, via goal progress; and goal progress predicted life satisfaction only indirectly, via academic satisfaction. The predictors accounted for substantial portions of the variance in both academic domain satisfaction and life satisfaction. Implications for research and practice involving the social cognitive model are considered.