The Relationship between Inner Well-being and the Criteria of Spouse Selection among the Youth in Gonabad

The inner well-being is a psychological component of quality of life. It is the outcome of an individual’s perception of the correspondence between the specified goals and the functional consequences in pursuing these goals. This is obtained through a continuous evaluation process and will result in inner and relatively stable satisfaction throughout one’s life. One of the cognitive variables relevant to the level of inner well-being is how individuals make their choices. Depending on whether their subjective choices are avaristic or realistic, people experience a certain level of happiness externally or behaviorally. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between the internal well-being of the subjects and their criteria of spouse selection. This investigation is a cross-sectional and correlational study conducted in 2013. The statistical population consisted of all the young people aged 18-25 living in Gonabad. The samples were selected based on Cochran-200 formula through stratified proportional-to-size sampling method. The level of inner well-being was measured by scale combination (combination of Diener Satisfaction-With-Life-Scale (SWLS) with Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI)). The data indicated that 16% of the respondents had an average level of inner well-being while 50.5% had a high level of inner well-being, and those with a 33.5% showed a very high level of inner well-being. The results of Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that physical (r=%59), religious (r=%66), social status (r=34% and moral criteria (r=%64) had a positively significant relationship with individuals’ inner well-being (P