Examination of association between childhood happiness memories of young adults and their psychological well-being

The objective of this study was to examine the association between childhood happiness memories of young adults and their psychological well-being, determine the young adult's childhood happiness memories and psychological well-being levels, and to specify if the variables indicate a significant difference according to the predetermined socio-demographic attributes. The population and the sample of this study consisted of 377 young adults residing in İstanbul/Beykoz, ranging from 18 to 25 year old ages. For data collection; "Socio-demographic Information Form" which was prepared by the researcher, was used to examine the effects of variables such as individuals' age, gender, educational background, income state, mother's educational background, father's educational background, parents' marriage status, parents' attitude. "Childhood Happiness / Peace Memories Scale", which was adapted to Turkish including validity and credibility studies by Akın et al (2013), was used to determine the childhood happiness memories of young adults. "Psychological Well-being Scale", of which validity and credibility studies were done by Telef (2011), was used to evaluate the psychological well-being levels. Considering the sub problems of this study, percentage, mean and standard deviation values were used in descriptive statistics for the analysis of the data acquired during the study. Skewness, Kurtosis, mean, standard deviation values, histogram graphs and Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality tests were used to determine the normal distribution of the data. T-Test, which is an hypothesis test, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to verify the significant difference between variables. Non-parametric versions of these aforementioned tests, Mann Whitney U-Test and Kruskal Wallis H-Test were used whenever the data were not suitable for parametric methods. Spearman Correlation Technique was utilized in order to determine the correlation between variables. The analysis were conducted using IBM's SPSS Statistics 23 software. The study showed that the childhood happiness memories of young adults were differentiated according to the father's educational background. The results led to a conclusion that the childhood happiness memories of young adults were not differentiated according to age, gender, educational background, income state, mother's income state, parents' marriage status and parents' attitude. The results also concluded that the psychological well-being of young adults were not differentiated according to age, gender, educational background, income state, mother's educational background, father's educational background, parents' marriage status and parents' attitude. A meaningful relationship between childhood happiness memories of young adults and their psychological well-being was not observed.