Sources of happiness and stress for college students: A replication and comparison over 20 years

Abstract

The advancement of positive psychology is dependent upon measures of happiness, both globally and in specific contexts. Data are presented on two measures of sources of college students' happiness from two samples. Testing of the two cohorts (Ns = 258, 68) was separated by 20 years. Measures for both samples had acceptable psychometric properties. There was an increase in college students' self-reported happiness across the 20-year period in the rankings of different sources of college happiness and general happiness. In a second study, a different group of students (N = 176) were given a list and asked to select the most important uplifts and hassles in their lives. In general, mean scores on affect measures were relatively stable across time, but transportation hassles were reported as a new source of negative affect in the present study. © Psychological Reports 2007.