Literature Review on Research Methodology

...

Assessment for subjective well- being are done using self-report measures which can also not be a true and clear reflection of how the individual is feeling due to bias errors where one can exaggerate their status.

Subjective well-being has been quoted as an aid to people's quality of life and does in turn improve the functioning of a society. This is required in a student's environment which is a college by boosting the cooperation of the students and boost the morale and happiness of the students. This was from The Collected Works of Ed Diener (2009) Studies have been done which proved that people are at their best when they interact with other and also at social gatherings. (Kahneman & Krueger, 2006). There is also an observation that higher levels of self-confident, warmth, leadership traits and being an extrovert are associated with high subjective well-being (Cunningham, 1988; Isen, 1987). I do not agree with some of the comments above. Most of the students who are very intelligent are introverts and end up starting big IT companies. They do spend most of their time on their work and studies and they have their own way and definition of happiness and well-being. That does not deter them from being having leadership traits. For example Steve Jobs and Mark Zukerberg are examples of people who were passionate about their work and ended up setting up big companies and led them.

Lu and Gilmour (2006) came up with a qualitative research with people from various upbringing and cultures and focusing on subjective well-being which came up with the following example that in America and Europe the subjective well-being is more

---------------------------------------------------------------

individualist while in East-Asia it is mostly socially oriented and my take is this could be due to the type of leadership and culture as well.

A study estimated that 30% and 40% of North American students in college were suffering from elevated psychological distress and mental disorder ( Adlaf, Gliksman, Demers, & Newton-Taylor, 2001; Svanum & Zody, 2001). The results from Svanum and Zody's research concluded that from the 412 respondents, there was a sample of students who were suffering from mental disorder due to substance and attained lower grades in their studies. There were some students who has depressive disorder and anxiety disorder who did well in their studies with higher grades.

Engagement and meaning

Engagement is one of the pathways to happiness according to orientations to happiness frameworks by Seligman and others (Seligman 2002; Peterson and Seligman 2004). Engagement is a great contributor in relation to pleasure and meaning. Engaged life entails someone doing things that are involving and needs great attention and concentration for example falling in love or having a career which is demanding. (Seligman, 2002). It can also be called to have zest, enthusiastic or have passion for whatever you will be doing be it play or work or help in the community. It involves resilience and commitment and with the sense of having impact. (Amiot, Vallerand, & Blanchard,2006; Hersey, 1955; Jamison, 2004; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, &Schwartz, 1997).

Engagement predicts life satisfaction (e.g., Jang, Mortimer, Haley, & Borenstein- Graves, 2004; Rowe & Kahn, 1997).

Meaning and purpose are the third components of happiness. ( Frankl, 1963). When people feel connected to something of outer space or larger than life (Antonovsky, 1979). When one uses his or her inner strength to skills to attend to assisting a community or less fortunate than you at church or in your neighbourhood (Seligman et al., 2006). When a survey was developed for 854 respondents for the Orientations to Happiness Questionaire by Peterson et al. 2005 . Participants who had high marks on all the three subscales were concluded to be having a full life.

Pleasure is also a factor for happiness. And in South Africa from the research

conducted does come up as the main priority.

---------------------------------------------------------------

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The literature provided was looking at Happiness and the rest of the variables namely: subjective well-being, pleasure, engagement, meaning and life satisfaction in general and focusing on adults in detail with the researches which were done. With the exception of Flourishing: Achievement-related correlates of students' well-being which was covering self-regulated learning, well-being ad achievement.

I had to link the literature and relate to the students' context. I also managed to pick up two journals which had to deal with student issues. We had room to add more journals to the literature review.

The tittles additional journals tittles are below namely

- The development of a conceptual model of student satisfaction with their experience in higher education written by Jacqueline Douglas, Robert McClelland and John Davies (2007)

-What feedback do students want? Written by Anna D. Rowe and Dr Leigh n. Wood.

From the material I managed to realize that most of the surveys are preset and do not ask the question on what are the challenges to students happiness or what is that they what to be done for them to be happy. I noted that students are treat as students and not as customers who need to be satisfied. In England final year students where only surveyed since they will be leaving the university to check on various aspect. I feel this should be done during the course of the year from first year to final year students. That would help to improve the systems and also manage the brand of the university and its rating (James et al., 1999; Palacio et al., 2002).

Feedback also should be used from the student's point of view. This has been neglected. And can affect the student's happiness.The gaps that needs to be covered are what are the challenges to student happiness?. Is it easy for a student to engage with other students?, or is the students having metal disorders and psychological distress as a result of unhappiness at college. How can that be managed to be able to be happy? ( Adlaf, Gliksman, Demers, & Newton-Taylor, 2001; Svanum & Zody, 2001).

Wouldn't the substance abuse due to too much pleasure and students trying to fit in and