The examination of the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction according to their just world belief, level of political participation and orientation

Mediha Sari, PhD student;
Fulya Cenkseven, PhD.;
Ruken Akar Vural, PhD.

Life satisfaction can be described as the individual cognitive assessment of his life in such a way that it includes everything (wide-ranging) (Pavot .et al, 1991). According to Pavot and Diener (1993), the judgment of self-satisfaction is based in the comparisons between the self-imposed criteria and the perception of the life conditions. It is believed that the Turkish youth’ just world belief, their level of political participation and their political orientation play a significant role in shaping their life satisfaction which is described as the individual assessment of each aspects of his life. The Just World Belief hypothesis states that people believe in a world in which people get what they reserve and deserve what they get. The Just World Belief has been found correlated with a number of variables, such as power distance, authoritarianism, conservatism, depression, and psychological well-being, among others. The political participation is the political activities at which citizens aim to selecting governmental authorities, and to directly or indirectly have an impact on their activities (Nie, Verba & Converse,1989). The political participation namely is the ruled citizens’ act of joining in the process of ruling. Research findings show that the level of political participation in youth is low (Borre, 2000; Brown, 2003; Dixon, 1996; Dudley & Gitelson, 2003; Erdoğan, 2003; Flanagan, 2003; McAllister & White 1994; Soule, 2001; Torney - Purta- Amadeo, 2003; Wilkins, 1999).

In this study, the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction is examined on the basis of their just world belief, the level of their political participation and their political orientation. The study seeks to answer the following questions:
1.Is there any significant difference in the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction according to the level of their just world belief?
2.Is there any significant difference in the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction according to the level of their political participation?
3.Is there any significant difference in the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction according to their political orientation?
4.Is there any significant relation among the Turkish youth’ life satisfaction, their just world belief and level of political participation?
The participants of the study consist of the youngs who are 18-25 ages either university students or not in Adana and Aydin, Turkey. Life Satisfaction Inventory by Diener, Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin (1985), Life Satisfaction Scale by Emmons, Larsen and Griffin (1985), Just World Scale by Rubin and Peplau (1975), Political Participation Questionnaire and Right-Left Orientation Scale by Cuhadar (2006) are used as data collection tools.
Key words: life satisfaction, just world belief, political participation, political orientation.