Quality of life and life satisfaction among university students: Exploring, subjective norms, general health, optimism, and attitude as potential mediators

Abstract

Objective

This study aims to examine the association of quality of life (QOL) with life satisfaction, subjective norms, general health, optimism, and attitude among university students.

Participants

Respondents include 632 university students (M_age=21.36, SD = 2.86).

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted on university students in Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran. Several statistical models were tested, including hierarchical regression and path analysis, to examine the direct or indirect association between a set of important variables.

Results

According to the results of path analysis, constructs of subjective norms, general health, positive attitude, optimism, and life satisfaction were significant predictors of students’ QOL. Compared with other constructs, general health status (p < 0.001, R2 = 0.548) and life satisfaction (p < 0.001, R2 = 0.253) showed the strongest association with QOL.

Conclusions

The results indicate that efforts to improve life satisfaction by targeting general health, subjective norms, optimism, and attitudes may provide promising ways to improve QOL.

Keywords:

• Health promotion
• mental health
• path analysis
• positive thinking
• psychology

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. This study is based on a research project approved by the Student Research Committee of Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences with the code of ethics IR.THUMS.REC.1396.35. We would like to thank the students who assisted the authors to run this research project. We would like to thank the students who assisted the authors to run this research project.

Additional information

Funding

No financial support was received for this study.