Psychological wellbeing in a Turkish-Canadian sample

Abstract

The study examined predictors of psychological wellbeing in a sample of 181 Turkish immigrants living in Toronto, Canada. Depression and life satisfaction were employed as indicators of psychological wellbeing. A model was put forth in which proactive coping and optimism were hypothesized to predict negatively to depression and positively to life satisfaction. Proactive coping consists of efforts to build up general resources that facilitate the achievement of challenging goals and promotes personal growth and was expected to contribute to the prediction of psychological wellbeing over and above the effects of optimism. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with life satisfaction and depression as criteria and demographics, optimism, and proactive coping as predictors. In general, the results supported the hypotheses; the model fit better when the criterion was depression than when life satisfaction was the criterion.

Keywords:

• Depression
• life satisfaction
• optimism
• proactive coping

Notes

1 Analyses were repeated excluding the participants who were not born in Turkey. The results did not change, so we included them in the final analyses.

2 In order to examine the low reliability score of the optimism scale, we conducted a factor analysis. The results of a principal component analysis, regardless of the type of rotation, suggested a two-factor solution. The emerging factors could not be interpreted in a meaningful way. Nevertheless, to examine if these two factors affected the analyses reported here, all analyses were conducted twice, with each factor separately. As no significant changes in the results were observed, the original optimism scores were used in all analyses. Also, deletion of no item increased the alpha. The low reliability of the scale may be an indication for potential differences in this immigrant group in terms of how optimism is viewed and experienced. This point calls for the attention of future research.

3 Four filler items in the revised LOT were excluded for the purpose of shortening the length of the questionnaire.

4 There was little variability in where participants were born—most participants reported Turkey as their birth place—therefore birth place was not included in the regression analyses. Also, because age and years spent in Canada were highly correlated, we chose to include years in Canada only to avoid multicollinearity and also because this is a more relevant variable in a sample of immigrants.