Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being Among University Students: Their Link and a Comparison of Czech, New Zealand and Indian Samples
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | According to some international surveys New Zealand is one of the happiest countries in the world, whereas India ranks at the bottom. Social capital shows according to The Legatum Institute one of the biggest difference between these two countries. In our cross-cultural study we compare subjective well-being and social capital among Czech, Indian and New Zealand university students and look at the link between social capital and subjective well-being. Our sample consists of 131 New Zealand, 165 Czech and 168 Indian university students. Questionnaires used in our research - SWLS (Diener et al., 1985), The Happiness Measure (Fordyce, 1988) and Social Capital Integrated Questionnaire (Grootaert et al., 2004) - were complemented by a qualitative methodology. Our research reveals unexpected results: Indian students are experiencing happiness most intensively and the level of life satisfaction of college students does not differ across the cultures. Qualitatively we found cultural differences in subjective well-being determinants. Social capital reflects cultural characteristics respecting our specific sample. The link between subjective well-being and social capital was found to some of the social capital aspects only. A link between life satisfaction and social capital was more frequent. |