| I can see less because I’m so captivated by the past, or I can see more because I add the vision of the past. This sentence could be used to describe the characteristics of "nostalgia" as a concept of psychology. In the west, nostalgia is a compound word which derived from the combination of nostos and algos (Greek), which means the pain caused by homesick. In spite of the Homer and the bible had described about nostalgia, but nostalgia as a professional term was in the 17th century by the Swiss doctor Hofer. Nostalgia’s connotation and denotation in more than 300 years had changed dramatically. Until the late 20th century, nostalgia was an independent concept, namely the modern sense of nostalgia --- emotional experience.Davis found that college students were more inclined to link the warm, past time, childhood together with nostalgia, so Davis decided that nostalgia was a kind of memory filtered out the pain, was a kind of positive experiences awakening the past. Sedikides et al also favored nostalgia was defined as a kind of positive emotional experience, especially they think nostalgia was positive and associated with self. But there were also many scholars stressed the nostalgic sadness, defined it as the yearning for the past which could no longer go back. Ortony, Clore and Collins also thought nostalgia was a mood of loss or grief, because it involved personal sorrow and pain of the past. There were also some scholars described nostalgic as bittersweet emotions, both sad and desirable, but dominated by positive emotion. To sum up, nostalgia in the modern sense, was a kind of feelings associated with self-awareness, and was a complex psychological state.Past researches simply measured the degree of missing people, things in the past, which could only explain one dimension of nostalgia. Nostalgia is characterized by a high level of cognitive evaluation. It is the cognitive process occurred in nostalgia that is closely related to emotional experience. Therefore, this research probes into youth students’ nostalgic structure to make a further discussion, rather than just staying in the nostalgic content level, and to develop youth students nostalgia scale, and to analyze its characteristics.This study based on the analysis of the result of the 120 open questionnaires and reference of foreign literatures and related scales, complied the preliminary questionnaire of 35 items. The initial questionnaire distributed in Beijing and Chongqing area, and we got 792 valid questionnaires. After item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, we formed retest questionnaire consist of 15 items.503 students in two universities in Chongqing completed it, and we got the final questionnaire after the second item analysis and exploratory factor analysis which included three dimensions and 15 items. The reliability test included internal consistency and retest reliability. The validity test included the content validity, structure validity and criterion validity. In the formal testing, there were come to be the descriptive analysis of the data, difference inspection and moderating effect inspection.The results of this research are as follow.(1) Youth students’ nostalgia scale consists of 15 items and 3 dimensions: Reflective, Desirability, Immersive.(2) Youth students’ nostalgia scale with good reliability and validity, self-modesty scale can be used for youth students.(3) Girls’ reflective level is higher than boys; there was no significant difference between male and female in the nostalgia level; with the increase of grade, young students in two periods of time report higher level of nostalgia, who just started at college and masters.(4) Social connection plied a moderating role in nostalgia and life satisfaction, perceived academic difficulty. |
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