Testing multidimensional well-being among university community samples in Italy and Serbia

Today well-being attracts the attention of public health professionals who are looking to explore life satisfaction as a whole and its specific domains. In order to contribute in moving the measurement of subjective well-being from a primarily academic activity to the sphere of intervention, we need to assess tools to measure multidimensional well-being (MWB) adopting state-of-the-art statistical techniques. Through structural equation modelling our goal was to test a MWB model among Italian and Serbian university students and to further observe its relationships with measures of life goals' pursuing. This cross-sectional pilot study was conducted on a consecutive sample of 86 Italian (45% female; Mage = 24.20, SD = 2.02) and 83 Serbian (55% female; Mage = 23.52, SD = 2.48) university students. Participants filled in an anonymous questionnaire investigating: self-perceived MWB, standardized control measures of well-being (life satisfaction and eudaimonic well-being), and commitment and stress regarding personal goal pursuing. Results evidenced how Serbians reported higher scores on MWB and on control measures than Italians. Moreover, the most frequently reported goals were to complete studies, to obtain job position and to be healthy. Exploratory and multi-group confirmatory factor analyses yielded a one-factor solution of MWB across Italian and Serbian sub-groups. MWB resulted positively associated with standardized control measures in both national groups. The results support the strength of our MWB model applied to samples of young university students in Italy and Serbia. Based on such findings, future studies may adopt this instrument in larger populations of university students in these two countries.