Student wellbeing has always been important for successful learning in university settings, and it has acquired an even greater importance in our new circumstances. Seeking deeper understanding of this aspect in our context, in this study we applied an instrument measuring hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing, a 20-item questionnaire created and validated during the authors PhD program. Both wellbeing dimensions were operationalized through positive and negative affects and assessed by means of an 11 points scale.
The sample consisted of 447 Mexican students rolled in intermediate French courses at a private Mexican university. All of the students volunteered to participate and were rather representative of the resiliently responding community, enthusiastic about their studies and the research project.
The initial data analysis showed that while within the hedonic wellbeing dimension, similarly to other studies, the negative affect was half as high as the positive affect, the eudemonic wellbeing behaved differently. Thus, it was relatively steady, oscillating between 6 and 7 for both the positive and the negative affects.
These findings echo with Professor Csíkszentmihályi’s conclusions on creativity mobilizing our negative affects in order to be productive. We might therefore suggest that while for resilient responses college students do need a positive overall balance of their hedonic wellbeing, they seem to be naturally recurring to the eudemonic negative affect to keep their performance up in especially adverse circumstances.
Further analyses are needed in order shed more light on the correlations. Besides, ways to involve less coping populations are being sought. Furthermore, small-scale studies involving character strength promotion are being led to understand which wellbeing dynamics they may produce. Sharing Professor Peterson's and Professor Seligman's point of view on wellbeing as the by-product of a meaningful life and character development, we continue to explore student wellbeing particularly focusing on its eudemonic conception congruent therewith.