Abstract

• The main purpose of this study was to investigate the personal meaning and general well-being of adolescents in Depeiyin Township. A total of 600 (316 males and 284 females) students selected from six schools in Depeiyin Township participated in this study. Personal Meaning profile (PMP) consisting of 30 items developed by Wong (1998) was used to measure personal meaning and Adolescents’ General Well-Being (AGWB) consisting of 27 items developed by Colombo (1986) was used to measure general well-being in this study. According to the results, the levels of adolescents’ personal meaning and general well-being in Depeiyin Township were satisfactory. Based on the results of independent samples t test, there were no significant differences in both personal meaning and general well-being of adolescents according to grade, school locality and subject combination. However, female adolescents were significantly higher than male adolescents in general well-being. One way ANOVA results showed that there was no significant difference not only in personal meaning but also in general well-being of adolescents according to aged group. Then, Pearson-Product Moment correlation was conducted and it was found that the personal meaning and the general well-being of adolescents were significantly and positively correlated. Finally, simple linear regression was used to predict general well-being from personal meaning and the result indicated that the adjusted R square was .237 and therefore 24% of variance in general well-being was explained by personal meaning of adolescents. Therefore, it may be concluded that personal meaning can affect on the general well-being of adolescents. The findings of this study may be expected to have some contribution to the benefit of education.