Youth and Happiness: Studying the Relationship between Socio-Demographic Determinants and Happiness among Students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

The first purpose of this study is to introduce a happiness scale extracted from the theoretical foundations of Islamic Philosophers. The second purpose is to study and investigate the relationships between some socio-demographic determinants and students' happiness.

This research is based on a quantitative approach and used a survey method. The 4th-year students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in the academic year of 2011-2012, whose population was about 6000 people, were chosen as the statistical society and 450 people were selected using the stratified sampling method. The Happiness Questionnaire was compiled with the definition of two types of happiness, sensual-imaginary and imaginary-intelligible, based on religious principles and Iranian society’s values. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software.

The findings of the multivariate regression equation showed that the type of college, the level of urbanization and class feeling have a significant relationship with happiness, but variables such as ethnicity, place of residence, gender and marital status did not have any significant relationship with types of happiness.

The results of this study indicated that social and demographic changes have a sustained effect on the degree and type of happiness of young students, and this requires further studies to investigate this important issue for precise programming in the university and society.