Psychological well-being and access to categories of experience in unemployed young adults

Abstract

The study investigated the correlations between a range of important categories of experience and psychological well-being in 22 unemployed young adults. The methods used included questionnaires, psychological scales and Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) where respondents answer a short series of questions in a diary on the receipt of signals from a personal bleeper. The results showed that in this sample ‘hope for the future’, ‘reduced financial strain’, access to Jahoda's ‘categories of experience’, in particular ‘activity’, and also ‘enjoyment’ were associated with important and different dimensions of psychological well-being. The study also found that those unemployed individuals with better access to Jahoda's categories of experience have better psychological well-being and engage in more work-like and active leisure activities than those with less access. Additionally, it was found that there are important correlations between access to Jahoda's categories of experience and hope for the future and enjoyment; and it is suggested that these intercorrelations could be very usefully explored further to study the dynamics of person-situation interactions important for psychological well-being.