Psychosocial Well-being among Undergraduate Students in Hong Kong and Kazakhstan

Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Psychosocial Well-being among Undergraduate Students in Hong Kong and Kazakhstan

Michelle W.T. Cheng, D. Gaipov, S. Kadyrov, S.K. Lo

 

ABSTRACT: 

This paper aims to provide comparative insights into the psychosocial well-being of Hong Kong and Kazakhstan undergraduate students, focusing specifically on the role of ethnicity and gender. The existing body of literature on students’ health-promoting lifestyle has shown how age, gender, income level, sociability, and knowledge of health can shape one’s perception of physical and mental well-being. Much lesser attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which students from diverse ethnic origins differ from each other in cultivating different dimensions of psychosocial well-being. To address this issue, this study delivered questionnaires to 284 undergraduate students from Hong Kong and 281 undergraduate students from Kazakhstan. Developed from the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, the questionnaire is designed to measure undergraduate’s psychosocial well-being threefold. Using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test, this paper shows that Hong Kong undergraduate students have higher levels of psychosocial well-being in terms of “interpersonal relations” and “stress management” whereas Kazakhstan undergraduate students are stronger in another dimension of well-being – “spiritual growth”. Results show that the influence of gender on students’ psychosocial well-being varies in different contexts. One of the important implications of these findings suggests that school administrators and students from different countries may benefit from cross-cultural exchange, co-promoting all dimensions of psychosocial well-being.

keywords: psychosocial well-being, mental health status, higher-education, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan.