Life satisfaction and mental health of married and unmarried research scholar: A comparative study

Pages:365-373
Mahesh Kumar Maurya and Yukti Gill (Department of Psychology, F.S.S., BHU, Varanasi, U.P.)

The present study was conducted with the objective of examining the nature of the relationship between life satisfaction dimensions and mental health among the married and unmarried research scholar. The population for our study was university research scholars, so we included a wide variety of satisfaction measures we thought relevant to this population, such as satisfaction with the family, friends, university, living environment and self. Participants were 143 research scholars from the Faculty of Social Science (FSS) and Arts, BHU, Varanasi (U.P.), India. Among these, 111 participants were unmarried and 32 participants were married research scholars. The scale, for measuring Multidimensional Students’ life satisfaction, developed by Huebner (2001) was used. Among the mental health status dimensions, general well-being was assessed on the dimensions of) psychological wellbeing (PWB) and psychological distress (PD (Heubeck & Neill, 2000). Among the demographic variables, there were significant difference between the married and unmarried research scholar with regard to age, research experience and income. Results also showed that family, friends, university, living environment and self was no significant difference between the married and unmarried research scholar. Among the mental health dimension there was no significant difference between the married and unmarried research scholar with regard to psychological wellbeing and psychological distress. Psychological wellbeing of married and unmarried research scholar was significantly, positively correlated with family, friends, university, living environment and self. On the other hand the psychological distress of married research scholar was significantly, positively correlated with experience and negatively correlated with family, friends, living environment and psychological wellbeing and psychological distress of unmarried research scholar was significantly, negatively correlated with experience, family, friends, university, living environment and psychological wellbeing. Family and university significantly predicted psychological wellbeing of married research scholar. On the other hand university, self and living environment significantly predicted psychological wellbeing of unmarried research scholar. Research experience and family significantly predicted psychological distress of married research scholar. On the other hand research experience, university and living environment significantly predicted psychological distress of unmarried research scholar. Purchase PDF
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