Gender and Age Factors in Subjective Wellbeing and Quality of Life Among College Students

Abstract

Quality of life (QOL) and subjective well-being (SWB) among college students have been deemed as important issues in studies. The present study aims to explore any influential elements of gender and age to their QOL and SWB, and to know if the QOL is influential to the SWB. Participants amounted to 651 respondents totally from three Indonesian universities (Diponegoro University, Padjajaran University, North Sumatra University) were involved in a purposive sampling using two instruments, i.e., the Personal Wellbeing Index-Adult (PWI-A) to measure SWO and The World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) to measure QOL. Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) test was used in the analysis. The results showed that age and gender had a significant effect on SWB (respectively .11 & .040, with p < .05) but had no effect on QOL of students (respectively .510 & .751, with p < .05). In addition, QOL was shown to affect SWB (p < .05). As a result, counselors and stakeholders on campus are encouraged to consider age and sex factors in their attempts of increasing college students’ SWB. However, further research is still suggestible to explore more complex factors in college students’ QOL, which can include social, individual, and other demographic factors.

Keywords

• gender, subjective wellbeing (swb), quality of life (qol), college students