Life Satisfaction of University Students in Relation to Family and Food in a Developing Country.

Berta Schnettler,Héctor Poblete,Klaus G Grunert,Germán Lobos,Clementina Hueche,Marianela Denegri,Edgardo Miranda-Zapata

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01522

Abstract

Life satisfaction and satisfaction with food-related life (SWFoL) are associated with healthy eating habits, family interaction around eating and family support. The present study evaluates the relationship between SWFoL and satisfaction with family life (SWFaL), and their relationship with life satisfaction in university students. We identify the relationship of two different types of family support and student SWFaL and explore a moderator effect of gender. A questionnaire was applied to a non-probabilistic sample of 370 students of both genders (mean age 21 years) in Chile, including Satisfaction with Life Scale, SWFoL scale, SWFaL scale, and the Family Resources Scale. Using structural equation modeling, we found that students’ life satisfaction was related to SWFaL and food-related life. A high positive relationship was identified between intangible family support and students’ SWFaL, which would have a mediating role between intangible support and life satisfaction. Using multi-group analysis, a moderator effect of gender was not found. These findings suggest that improving SWFoL, SWFaL and intangible family support is important for both female and male students.

Highlights

Subjective well-being is a multidimensional category of phenomena involving emotional responses, positive and negative affect, global judgments of life satisfaction and domain satisfactions (Diener et al, 1999)
According to the “bottom–up” theoretical approach to life satisfaction (Brief et al, 1993), results of the structural equation model analysis confirm the positive relation between satisfaction with food-related life (SWFoL) and overall life satisfaction reported previously in a similar sample (Schnettler et al, 2015b)
These findings confirm that food is a domain that could have an impact on the life satisfaction of a student within a period of life marked by the difficulty of achieving a balanced diet and associated health problems (Blichfeldt and Gram, 2013; Çivitci, 2015; Hilger et al, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Subjective well-being is a multidimensional category of phenomena involving emotional responses, positive and negative affect, global judgments of life satisfaction and domain satisfactions (Diener et al, 1999). Different domains often interact (Wilensky, 1960). The spillover model proposes that satisfaction in one domain affects the others and that life domain satisfactions are positively related (Wu et al, 2009). The debate regarding the importance of different domains in subjective well-being has endured for decades, the role of domain importance in subjective well-being remains a topic that deserves further research (Hsieh, 2016).

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