A COMPARISON OF WELL-BEING AND STRENGTHS OF CHARACTER IN STUDENTS BASED ON ACADEMIC FIELDS

Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal human functioning. The focus of positive psychology is on how human life flourishes and reaches its potentials. Psychological well-being and strengths of character are the core concepts of the scientific approach of positive psychology. The main problem of the present study was a lack of comprehensive investigation of Psychological well-being and strengths of character based on academic field. The aim of this study is to compares the psychological well-being and strengths of character in students according to their academic fields. For this purpose, 351 students of Islamic Azad University, Shabestar branch were selected from different faculties and different majors using the stratified clustering method. In order to measure the variables, psychological well-being questionnaire of Ryff (RSPWB-SF: Ryff, 1989) and values in action inventory of strengths (VIA- IS: Peterson & Seligman, 2004) questionnaire were used. The methodology of this study is causal-comparative and for data analysis, multivariate analysis of variance was used. After the test assumptions, results indicated that the elements of psychological well-being and character strengths are significantly different in the students based on their majors (P=0.001). Regarding the obtained results, it seems that the nature of the major affects psychological well-being as well as character strengths of the students. Moreover, as positive attributes of the character affect selecting educational majors, they are influenced by the majors as well.