Differences among community college students on dimensions of wellness as measured by the 5F-WEL-A

The study herein compares students in a metropolitan community college on dimensions of wellness based on age, sex/gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The Five Factor Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle -- Adult Version (Myers & Sweeney, 2005), which is based on the Indivisible Self model (Myers & Sweeney, 2005), along with the Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status [BSMSS](Barratt, 2006), an instrument designed to provide a relative measure of a respondent's socioeconomic status, was used to record demographic data and measure self-reported wellness. The dimensions of student wellness investigated include: Total Wellness, the Creative Self, the Coping Self, the Physical Self, the Social Self, and the Essential Self.;Data analysis was conducted in two stages. First, descriptive statistics were calculated on all research variables. The second stage of the analyses compared group means to determine the presence of statistically significant differences among the demographic groups. As anticipated, differences among groups were found in dimensions of wellness among the groups. It was further anticipated that there would be no differences at the holistic level of wellness as strengths mitigate weaknesses. This was largely found to be true with the exception of the differences among socioeconomic groups, a demographic with very little historical investigation in this area. After discussion of the findings, suggestions for further investigation and some potential programmatic responses to the information are presented.