Satisfaction with life, Self-esteem, gender and marital status as predictors of depressive symptoms among United Arab Emirates college students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive role of life satisfaction, self-esteem, gender and marital status on depressive symptoms. The sample consists of 547 (315 female; 232 males) undergraduate students from Al Ain university of Science and Technology in United Arab Emirates. Depressive symptoms were measured by the Centre for Epidemiologic Scale (CES-D) (Radlolf, 1977) while life satisfaction was measured by satisfaction with life Scale (SWLS) (Diener et al., 1985) and Self-Esteem Scale (SES) (Rosenberg, 1965) was used to measure self-esteem. T-test analysis, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis were employed. The findings showed a great ratio of depressive symptoms among UAE college students. Female students reported higher level of depressive symptoms than males. Also single students obtained higher depression than married. The findings showed that lower life satisfaction and lower self-esteem were associated with high levels of depressive symptoms. However, life satisfaction emerged as the most significant predictor of depressive symptoms accounting for 32.6% of the variance, self-esteem, gender and marital status each accounted for an additional 6.5% of the variance in depressive symptoms. All three predictors explained 38.2% of the total variance. The implications and limitations are reviewed as are the suggestions for future research. Key words: Depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, self-esteem, gender, marital status, college students.