Personal characteristics of Chinese students with different levels of subjective well-being

The paper presents the findings of an empirical study on personal characteristics of Chinese students with high, medium, and low subjective well-being. A survey involved 722 male and female majors aged 18-25 studying at Chinese universities. The Chinese version of the famous Russian psychodiagnostic techniques was employed to collect empirical data. They were mathematically processed by k-means clustering and dispersion analysis (Analysis of Variance - ANOVA). The results of ANOVA show that the severity of students’ personal characteristics differs depending on the level of subjective well-being. The author concludes that students with a higher level of subjective well-being demonstrate higher rates of personal characteristics. These characteristics are a part of the personal potential of an actor: self-efficacy, dispositional optimism, hardiness. All components of hardiness (resilience, challenge, control, and commitment) are significantly higher in students with higher levels of subjective well-being compared to students with lower levels of subjective well-being.