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

Notes: Reference categories were majoring in engineering and law, working and underclass background.

(*):p [is less than] .05

Other significant predictors of life satisfaction included father education which showed a positive total effect (.101, see Table 1) and the middle class background which had a negative effect (-.076). Sex and age had no significant total effects on the student's life satisfaction. Besides those significant predictors as hypothesized, majoring in business (.105), matriculation grades (.096), having religious faith (.154), being female, and father education (.138) all exhibited significant positive effects on thoughtful studying. Attention to public affairs had another significant predictor, matriculation grades, whose effect was positive (.071, see Table 2). Whereas father education showed a significantly positive effect (.096) on study time, the student's age and the university qualification of the student's father showed a significantly negative effect (-.077). A higher GPA tended to result from an older age (.394), higher matriculation grades (.132), business study (.220), social science study (.110), no religious faith (.094), and being female (.065). The female was more likely than the male to major in social science (.228) and business (.205). A high level of father education tended to have discouraged the matriculation student to enroll in the social science major (total effect = -.078, see Table 2).

To examine the possibility that higher life satisfaction led the student to study more vigorously, a more complicated model added four factor loadings for elaboration, effort regulation, critical thinking, and theorizing on life satisfaction (see Figure 2). This model therefore incorporated both effects of studying on life satisfaction and those of life satisfaction on components of studying. It held the premise that life satisfaction might influence the student's report of thoughtful studying. Results of structural equation modeling for this model showed that life satisfaction had significantly negative effects on the four studying components, elaboration (-.366), effort regulation (.136), critical thinking (-.182), and theorizing (-.110). These negative effects were contrary to the expectation that life satisfaction motivates the student to engage more energetically in studying. On the other hand, the introduction of these reverse effects only served to augment the effect (.559) of studying on life satisfaction. Hence, this model also championed the positive effect of studying. Nevertheless, the Parsimonious Goodness-of-Fit Index of this model (PGFI=.372) was lower than that of the initially proposed model (.385). This comparison suggests the superiority of the initial model. In sum, because the alternative model had an inferior parsimonious fit and factor loadings that were contradictory to expectation, the claim about the reverse causation gathered little empirical support.

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Discussion