Subjective Well-being Among Dalit Adolecents

By : Vandana Jain, Manjula. M.Y.

Page No: 189-197

Abstract
The present study examines the subjective well-being of dalit adolescent girls and boys and compares the subjective well-being between the two groups. In the Indian society dalits have been exploited for centuries because of the social structure. In our caste ridden society they also face the risk of inhuman treatment by the upper castes. Subjective well-being (SWB) includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction. Psychologists have defined happiness as a combination of life satisfaction and the relative frequency of positive and negative affect. SWB therefore encompasses moods and emotions as well as evaluations of one’s satisfaction with general and specific areas of one’s life. For the present study, sample was selected from government pre-metric hostels for boys and girls situated in Belthangadi Taluk. The participants were administered Subjective well-being inventory Developed by Nagpal and Sell (1992). The obtained data was analysed using independent ‘t’ test. Findings show that 95% of the boys and 71% of the girls have high level of Subjective Well-being. Dalit boys and girls do not differ significantly from each other in their level of subjective wellbeing.

Authors :
Vandana Jain : Research Scholar, Department of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Psychology, SDM College (Autonomous) Ujire.
M.Y. Manjula : rofessor & Head — Department of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Psychology, SDM College (Autonomous) Ujire