Wellness and self-esteem among Turkish university students

Abstract

This study investigated the differences among 465 Turkish first year university students regarding overall wellness and four of its dimensions (cognitive emotional wellness-CEW, relational wellness-RW, life goal-LG, and physical wellness-PW) in terms of self-esteem levels and gender. The data were gathered by administering the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and a short-form of the Wellness Inventory (WI-30). The results of ANOVA showed significant main effects for high-low self-esteem and gender, indicating that those who had a high level of self-esteem, and females, as compared to males, reported higher levels of overall wellness. The results of MANOVA employed on the four wellness subscores yielded a significant main effect for high-low self-esteem and for gender. The findings indicated that students who have higher self-esteem reported higher scores on all the four dimensions of wellness; and females reported higher levels of relational wellness and physical wellness than males.