Meaningful life and happiness: Perspective from Malaysian Youth

Abstract

As suicide rates among young people are rising globally, a mixed-mode research was conducted to investigate the perception of young people in Malaysia of what is meant by “Meaningful Life”, and its association with “life is determined by myself”. Two hundred and seventy young people aged 15–24 were recruited in this cross sectional survey. A thematic qualitative approach was used to analyze open-ended questions and the findings reveal that happiness, relationships with family members and friends and having specific goals in life were the top three contributors to meaningfulness in young peoples’ lives. The Chi-square test for independence showed significant association between the coded variables and gender. Females perceived life to be meaningful when the people around them were happy and males perceived life to be meaningful when having good relationships with people around them, and both thought that having goals in life make it meaningful. The result also showed that there was a significant association for females between “life is determined by myself” and “meaningful life”. Present findings suggested that meaningfulness in life is not a pure individual affect or personal construct but a relational concept; it is related to the meaningful activities in which young people engaged. Future researcher may further explore the relationship between youth perceptions of meaningful life and autonomous environments, among the immediate ecological systems of family, peers, and school surroundings.