Abstract:

In this study it is aimed to identify the teacher candidates’ happiness, optimism, meaning in life and life satisfaction levels and to examine these levels according to demographic variables. This research is a relational screening model, which is a kind of general screening model, and the study group consists of 687 teacher candidates who has got pedagogical formation from various departments of Gaziantep University in 2015-2016 academic year. In the research Personal Information Form is used to gather information about the demographic characteristics of the people who form the study group Short Form of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire is used to measure happiness Life Orientation Test is used to evaluate optimism Meaning in Life Questionnaire is used to measure the meaning in life Life Satisfaction Scale is used to measure life satisfaction level. During the data analyzing process descriptive statistics, t test, ANOVA, tukey HSD, correlation and multiple regression technics are utilized.  As a conclusion of the analysis it is found out that the happiness of the teacher candidates shows significant difference according to parents’ attitudes, whether he/she studies in the department he/she desired the optimism of the teacher candidates shows significant difference according to parents’ attitudes, whether he/she studies in the department he/she desired meaning in life shows significant difference according to parents’ attitudes, whether he/she studies in the department he/she desired life satisfaction shows significant difference according to sex, parents’ attitudes, whether he/she studies in the department he/she desired. Stepwise regression analysis related to predicting the happiness scores is completed in three stages. It is confirmed that life satisfaction, optimism and meaning in life variables explain 45.6 % of the total variance of the happiness scores.  

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