Abstract

The present study explored the perceptions of Korean college students about what is a good life for them or what can make them happy and good. A total of 60 students participated in FGI(Focused Group Interview), and their responses were reviewed by the present investigators independently and 14 categories were derived from content analysis. The list of 132 good life characteristics was administered to 200 college students in three geographic regions of Korea to assess the importance of each item in good life through 6-poing Likert scales. The 20 items below the average scale value 3.0 were deleted, and the Good Life Inventory for college students was constructed with 112 items in 14 factors. The Good Life Inventory and the Scale of Subjective Well-being were administered to another 165 students in order to assess their goodness and happiness through 6-point Likert scale. Principal component factor analysis and reliability analysis showed that most factors of good life were unidimensional and significantly related to the factors of subjective well-being, resulting in support of the construct validity of the inventory. The results of step-wise regression analyses revealed that self acceptance was the best predictor of life satisfaction among Korean college students. For male college students, positive relationship with others, will, family identity, and financial ability in addition to self acceptance were the significant predictors, while the financial ability factor was added in the group of female students. Limitations of the present research and suggestions for further studies were discussed.