Studying As A Source Of Life Satisfaction Among University Students - Statistical Data Included

Hypothesis 3: A student's past GPA has a positive effect on the student's thoughtful studying.

Hypothesis 4: A student's study time has a positive effect on the student's thoughtful studying.

Hypothesis 5: A student's study in social science has a positive effect on the student's thoughtful studying.

Hypothesis 6: A student's study in social science has a positive effect on the student's attention to public affairs.

Altogether, these hypotheses outline the role of social construction, from studying social science to thoughtful studying that successively contribute to the student's life satisfaction.

Methods

The study involved a longitudinal design to survey students of the City University of Hong Kong in the first semester of the academic year 1997-98. It surveyed about 814 students in the largest classes (on average, a size of 30) of each field of study. Among them, 32.8% were first-year students, 44.0% were second-year students, and 23.2% were third-year students; 8.7% were arts students, 11.4% were science students, 13.9% were social science students, 32.1% were business students, 29.9% were engineering students, and 4.1% were law students; 57.3% were female and 42.7% were male; 34% having religious faith. Their average age was 20.7 years (SD = 1.6). According to the father's occupation, 23.3% of students came from an upper-middle class background, which included the status of being an employer, professional, and manager (Wright, 1985); 15.0% came from a middle class background, which referred to jobs of clerical, technical workers, and supervisors of manual workers; 53.3% were from a working class background, which represented manual workers. Their fathers averaged to have attained 7.5 years (SD = 4.5) of formal education. Only 6.0% of the fathers were university graduates.

Measurement

A structured questionnaire, written in English, included Likert-type statements in random order to measure the following constructs by minimizing bias due to order and the context (Tourangeau & Rasinski, 1988). The response format was a five-point scale, giving a score of 0 to the response of "strongly disagree," 25 to "disagree," 50 to "neutral," 75 to "agree," and 100 to "strongly agree." The statement items proved to be useful for measuring the constructs as desired in previous studies (Cheung, 1995; Diener, 1994; Pintrich et al., 1991).

Life satisfaction. A measure of life satisfaction attained a reliability alpha of .532 by combining the following four items (Diener et al., 1985): The conditions of my life are excellent. I most ways my life is close to my ideal. I am not satisfied with my life (negatively phrased). So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.

Studying was a latent variable indicated by measures of learning strategies, critical thinking, and theorizing.

Elaboration. A measure of elaboration in learning attained a reliability alpha of .729 by combining the following six statement items (Pintrich et al., 1991): When I study for this class, I pull together information from different sources, such as lectures, readings, and discussion. I try to understand the material in this class by making connections between the readings and concepts from the lectures. When reading for this class, I try to relate the material to what I already know. I try to relate ideas in this subject to those in other courses whenever possible. I try to apply ideas from course readings in other class activities such as lecture and discussion. When I study for this course, I write brief summaries of the main ideas from the readings and the concepts from the lectures.