Subjective Happiness and Hope among College Students: A Gender-based Multivariate Analysis

Description

Noor Glory¹ and Kusha Mehra² (Department of Psychology, DAVC-10 Chandigarh, India¹ and Department of Psychology, Amity University Mohali, Punjab, India²)

Hope is a positive psychological trait which enables a person to pursue goals, overcome problems, and maintain psychological well-being in life. The present study aimed to examine gender differences in hope (agency & pathways) and subjective happiness among college students. A sample comprising 118 college students (62 females & 56 males), aged between 18-25 years, was selected. For this purpose, standardized measures (Adult Hope Scale developed by Snyder et al., 1991; & Subjective Happiness Scale developed by Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) were used to collect data. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and Pearson’s product-moment correlation. The findings indicated that gender had no significant multivariate effect on overall hope, agency, pathways and subjective happiness (Wilks’ Λ = .959, F(4, 113) = 1.215, p = .309, partial η² = .041). Further, univariate analyses also revealed no significant gender differences across the study variables (p > .05). Additionally, correlation analysis showed significant positive relationships between hope and subjective happiness. Agency showed the strongest relationship (p < .001), followed by pathways (p < .001), whereas overall hope was weakly but significantly related to subjective happiness (p = .013). These findings suggest that students with greater goal-directed motivation and the ability to identify pathways toward goal attainment experience higher levels of subjective happiness, irrespective of gender. The findings underscore the importance of incorporating hope-enhancement strategies, goal-setting programmes, and positive psychology interventions in higher education to promote students’ psychological well-being and happiness.