The Psychosocial Factors Of Medical Students’ Life Satisfaction And Its Associated Statistical Techique In A Medical University

[Objective]To understand the status of mental health in the medical students; appropriatestatistical methods were used to reveal relationships between life satisfaction and sex,personality, self-esteem,self-efficacy, social support life stress, internal control.[Methods]1321full-time undergraduate students in the first, second,third and four year areextracted from a medical university through stratified random sampling. Access to theircurrent student of life satisfaction，personality, self-efficacy and other information onthe status; the use of descriptive statistics, single factor analysis, multiple linearregression analysis, principal component regression analysis, factor analysis, structuralequation model methods, revealed the relationship between medical students’ lifesatisfaction and social psychological factors.[Results]The results of analysis show, the subjective satisfaction of the medical studentshad an average score of4.42±0.68, for objective satisfaction, the average score was4.71±1.67, the total score of life satisfaction was9.13±1.61, which lower than theaverage score of the national norm. It means that the medical students have morepressure, lower life satisfaction and more likely to have mental health problems. Theresult of univariate analysis shows that the male average score was significantly lowerthan the female（P<0.05）and most of psychosocial factors are related to the lifesatisfaction.Principal component analysis showed that female, low-grade, theonly-child, city-student, extraversion, emotional stability, high score of social support,self-efficicy, self-esteem and internal control, high pressure of study,personalrelationship, punishment and physical health mean a higher score of life satisfaction.The factor analysis showed that the psychological and behavioral characteristics of medical students, including pressure cognitive, social support,personality and internalcontrol of these factors can explain most of the variation in psychological factors.Structural equation model analysis showed that sex, extraversion, self-esteem andself-efficacy have a direct impact on life satisfaction. Social support and sentiment notonly have a direct impact,but also can indirectly impact life satisfaction throughpressure factors and social support.It also showed that sentiment and social supportplay a mediated role between pressure events and life satisfaction.[Conclusion]1. Compared with the norm, medical students’ subjective satisfaction, objectivesatisfaction and overall satisfaction were more lower than the general collegepopulation.This may be related to medical students specializing particularity.2. Although principal component regression and the multivariate regressionanalysis can slove the correlation between various factors and life satisfaction，principal component regression analysis fails to reveal the relationship between adependent variable and many independent variables which have small proportion inprincipal component.The multivariate regression method revealed the correlationbetween various factors and life satisfaction, for isntance,internality andpersonality.What is more,the multiple linear regression analysis showed that theeffects of some stress factors on life satisfaction on the basis of theoretical research.Insummary, the research used the multivariate regression method to analysis the impactof psychosocial factors on life satisfaction.3. The structural equation model can verify the results of multiple regressionanalysis.It found the pathways and path coefficient of the factors affected the lifesatisfaction and revealed the relationships among latent variables. Such as socialsupport, emotional state not only had a direct impact on life satisfaction, but also hadthe indirect effect by other factors.The model has many advantages compared withtraditional statistical methods in the analysis of latent variables,and should be properlyused with professional.