An examination of culture and gender differences on the Love of Life Scale (LLS) and its psychometric properties

ABSTRACT

The present research studied 2570 college students from seven countries: Egypt, Algeria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran, India and Turkey. The aims were: (a) to compare love of life mean scores between the seven samples, (b) to examine sex-related differences in love of life, and (c) to explore the principal components of the Love of Life Scale (LLS). The highest mean total LLS scores were for Kuwait, India, and Iran students, respectively. All countries differed significantly from one another, except Algeria versus Lebanon and India versus Iran. Higher mean LLS scores for women were found for each country. Cronbach alpha for the LLS was .93. A principal component analysis extracted from one to four components for individual countries, but one component was extracted for the total sample and labelled: Positive attitude towards life and Meaningfulness of life. The love of Life concept may be considered to be an important concept in positive psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Love of life
• African students
• Asian students
• gender differences

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Deans of the colleges for approving the study, the college students for their participation in the study, and the research assistants for collecting the date.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval and consort to participate

Permission for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee by the directors of the Alexandria University, Egypt; University Djillali Liabes of Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria; Kuwait University, Kuwait; Beirut Arab University, Lebanon; Iran University of Medical Sciences, Iran; VBS Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, India; and Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.