How Socio-economic Factors, Relationships, Daily Life, and Future Orientation Affect Happiness for College Students

Abstract

This research aims to gain a better understanding of college students' thoughts on what factors make them happy and contribute to enhancing their happiness. We focused on the relationship between their self-assessed happiness and various factors affecting happiness, such as their socio-economic status, relationships with others, future orientation, and daily activities. Survey data were collected from October, 2014 to December, 2014 at a South Korean University. The final total number of respondents was 474 from 500 distributed questionnaires, after excluding 26 responses with missing values and unanswered items. The response was comprised of 247 male students, and 227 female students, and of 268 freshmen, 145 sophomores, 35 juniors, and 26 senior students. Factors that were statistically significant were gender, year, average cost of leisure, appearance satisfaction, conversation hour with parents, having girlfriend/boyfriend, sexual experience, number of friends, satisfaction with major, Grade Point Average (GPA), studying hours, time for self-improvement, reading hours, use of smart phone hours, number of daily meals, exercise hour, schedule management and future goal setting. This research was conducted utilizing only data from one university and so it may not be appropriate to generalize the results. Moreover, some of the variables are not in line with previous studies on happiness. Some other mediating variables may exist. Therefore, following research should be conducted.