Life Satisfaction of University Students in Relation to Family and Food in a Developing Country

Abstract

Life satisfaction and satisfaction with food-related life (SWFoL) are associated with healthy eating habits, family interaction around eating and family support. The present study evaluates the relationship between SWFoL and satisfaction with family life (SWFaL), and their relationship with life satisfaction in university students. We identify the relationship of two different types of family support and student SWFaL and explore a moderator effect of gender. A questionnaire was applied to a non-probabilistic sample of 370 students of both genders (mean age 21 years) in Chile, including Satisfaction with Life Scale, SWFoL scale, SWFaL scale, and the Family Resources Scale. Using structural equation modeling, we found that students’ life satisfaction was related to SWFaL and food-related life. A high positive relationship was identified between intangible family support and students’ SWFaL, which would have a mediating role between intangible support and life satisfaction. Using multi-group analysis, a moderator effect of gender was not found. These findings suggest that improving SWFoL, SWFaL and intangible family support is important for both female and male students.

Psychometric evaluation of the Portuguese Satisfaction with Family Life Scale

“…The CFA displayed a one-factor solution of the scale. This factor structure is consistent with data from Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealand, US (Zabriske & Ward, 2013), Chilean (Schnettler et al, 2017), and Peruvian samples (Caycho-Rodriguez et al, 2018).…”

“…Past research has also shown strong relationships between life satisfaction and domains of life satisfaction (Ruiz et al, 2009). Higher levels of satisfaction with family relationships were associated with higher overall life satisfaction (Schimmack et al, 2002;Schnettler et al, 2017). Past research indicated that greater social support was linked to greater levels of life satisfaction (Goodwin & Hernandez, 2000;Kong, Zhao, & You, 2012).…”

“…Besides the English-language version of the SWFLS, to the best of our knowledge, there is only a Spanish adaptation of the SWFLS (Caycho-Rodriguez et al, 2018;Schnettler et al, 2017). Thus, in this study, the Portuguese adaptation of the Satisfaction with Family Life Scale will be presented.…”

<p>Family Functioning and Life Satisfaction: The Mediatory Role of Emotional Intelligence</p>

“…8 Currently, there is much debate with respect to the importance of different factors in subjective well-being. 9 The "bottom-up" approach suggests that people's overall life satisfaction depends, to a great extent, on different events or many concrete domains such as family, work, and leisure time. 10 Among all these factors, family of origin seems to be one of the key variables that contribute to life satisfaction.…”

Validez e invarianza factorial de una medida breve de Satisfacción con la Vida Familiar

“…La SWFLS, creada originalmente para usarse en padres e hijos adolescentes estadounidenses entre 11 y 15 años, se ha aplicado a personas entre 26 y 73 años de edad (Melton, Ellis, & Zabriskie, 2016) y en otros grupos de contextos culturales diferentes, tales como estudiantes universitarios chilenos (Schnettler et al, 2017a) y adolescentes chilenos entre 10 y 17 años (Schnettler et al, 2017b). Respecto a las evidencias psicométricas de validez y confiabilidad, Zabriskie y Ward (2013), a partir de datos recolectados de adolescentes de diferentes culturas, señalan que la SWFLS, a partir de un análisis de componentes principales con rotación Varimax, presenta una estructura factorial unidimensional consistente, con cargas factoriales que varían de 0.7 a 0.93 y valores del coeficiente alfa de Cronbach que van desde 0.79 hasta 0.94.…”