Life Orientations among University Students

Abstract

In the present research, whether or not loneliness, body image, academic achievement level and grade, faculty, gender and age variables predicted life orientation of university students. The research is conducted with 427 students (214 females and 213males) selected from Faculty of Education (134 students), Faculty of Science and Literature (150 students), Faculty of Engineering (52 students) and Faculty of Economical and Administrative Sciences (91 students) of Mersin University. One-hundredtwenty of them were freshmen, 144 sophomores, 128 juniors and 35 were senior students whose ages ranged between 17-33 with a mean of 21.26 and standard deviation of 2.17. The data related with life orientation was gathered by means of Life Orientation Scale developed by Scheier and Carver (1987) adapted to Turkish by Aydın and Tezer (1991). UCLA Loneliness Scale developed by Russel, Peplau and Ferguson (1978) and adapted to Turkish culture by Demir (1989) was used to gather data related with loneliness, the data related with the body image was developed by Offer Self Image Scale Body Image Subscale developed by Offer, Ostrov, Howard and Atkinson (1989) and adapted to Turkish culture by Şahin (1993). Stepwise multiple regression analysis was administered to the data to examine whether the students’ loneliness levels, body image, academic achievement level and grade, faculty, gender and age predicted life orientation. According to the analysis, three statistically significant models have observed (body image (F=70.595; df=399;1, p=0.000), gender (F=38.272: df=399;2, p=0.000) and grade (F=27.271, df=399;3, p=0.000)). Body image has predicted 15.1% of the variance of life orientation and follows 1.1% gender and 0.9% grade respectively. The greater the body image scores of the students the greater the life orientation scores (t=8.402; p=.000). Additionally, females scored greater on life orientation than males (t=-2.281; p=.023) and while the grade level increase, life orientation scores of the students decrease (t=2.140; p=.033). Faculty, age and academic achievement did not predict the life orientation. Results were discussed with a special concern on gender difference and the effect of educational process to the behavior.