Social Support and Adolescent Emotional Competence in Slovakia and China: Cross-Cultural Implications for Sustainable Education

Emotional competence underpins adolescent well-being and represents an important dimension of socio-emotional learning relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 3 and 4). This study examined the associations between perceived family, school, and peer support and three dimensions of emotional competence—emotional regulation, empathy, and self-control—among adolescents aged 10–15 years in Slovakia (n = 268) and China (n = 253). Cross-sectional survey data were analyzed using country-specific and multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM), with robust maximum likelihood estimation employed for sensitivity analyses. In the Slovak sample, family, school, and peer support were positively associated with emotional regulation; school and peer support with empathy; and family and school support with self-control. In the Chinese sample, family and peer support were positively associated with emotional regulation; peer support with empathy; and all three sources of support with self-control. Formal cross-country comparisons did not identify statistically significant differences in the nine structural paths after correction for multiple comparisons. Nevertheless, the estimated association between peer support and emotional regulation was more pronounced in the Chinese sample, although this difference was not statistically robust after multiple-comparison correction. These findings highlight the relevance of supportive family, school, and peer relationships to adolescent emotional competence in both contexts, while suggesting that potential contextual variations in these associations warrant further investigation.