Correlations Between Social Support and Loneliness, Self-Esteem, and Resilience Among Left-Behind Children in Mainland China: A Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Social support is frequently reported to be correlated with loneliness, self-esteem, and resilience among left-behind children in mainland China. However, to date, there is no consensus on the extent to which those factors are correlated with social support among left-behind children. We thus performed a meta-analysis to quantitatively synthesize the previous findings. METHODS: Two investigators systematically and independently searched PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Wan Fang, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and China Science Technology Journal Database (VIP) on January 9, 2022. Pooled Pearson's correlation coefficients between social support and loneliness, self-esteem, and resilience were calculated by Stata 16.0 software using random effects model. RESULTS: Forty-seven studies involving a total of 30 212 left-behind children were identified. A large degree of negative correlation was found between social support and loneliness [summary r: −0.36 (95% CI: −0.42– −0.30), p < 0.001]. Large positive correlations were found between social support and self-esteem, and resilience [self-esteem: summary r: 0.33 (95% CI: 0.24–0.41), p < 0.001; resilience: summary r: 0.45 (95% CI: 0.38–0.50), p < 0.001]. The pooled correlations revealed some discrepancies when stratified by some moderators. Sensitivity analysis also revealed the robustness of the findings. The Egger regression and Duvall and Tweedle trim-and-fill procedure suggest the absence of publication bias. CONCLUSION: The current meta-analysis provided solid evidence that social support has a high degree of negative correlation with loneliness and a high degree of positive correlation with self-esteem and resilience among left-behind children in mainland China. This indicated that left-behind children with high levels of social support tend to have lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of self-esteem and resilience. More studies, especially large prospective studies, are warranted to verify our findings.