Research On The Relationship Between Online Social Support And Life Satisfaction Among College Students

Using internet changes not only the people's learning and working, but also the people's life form and interpersonal interaction. The people use internet to sustain, develop their social net and change social support. This paper explored the mental structure of college students' online social support, developed an online social support scale for suiting Chinese students. The study structured college students' online social support model that focused on the relationship between online social support and general life satisfaction. On the one hand, it gained social support theories. On the other hand, it provided the revelation to the educators for psychological consultation and health education of college students.This study surveyed 847 college students from Taiyuan, Xi'an and Wuhan, using interview and questionnaire. It included three parts. The first part developed the online social support scale of college students. The second part analyzed the demography difference of college students' online social support. The third part explored the online social support how to influence the life satisfaction. The results showed that:1. The college students' online social support measure contained four factors. They were emotional support, tangible aid, informational support, and social network support. The scale's Cronbach'sa is 0.926.The four subscales' Cronbach'sa was from 0.768 to 0.825.The relation between every factor and total score was from 0.792 to 0.880.It had the high reliably and validly. 2. There were lower levels of online social support in college students. There were significant interactions in specialty and grade. No matter the arts or the science, the upper division students' scores were higher than other grades. There were significant difference in different gender; the boys had the higher score than girls. The significant difference lied in internet experience. The students that have three internet experiences had higher scores than the students that have one or two years. There were significant differences on surfing time .The students who spend 15 hours on surfing had the highest scores. The students who spend 1 hour on surfing had the lowest scores.3. The internet life satisfaction levels of college students were high; however, there were lower levels of internet self-efficacy and general life satisfaction. There were influences of gender on college students' internet life satisfaction and internet self-efficacy. The boys' scores were higher than the girls'. There were significant difference in different grades on internet life satisfaction, internet self-satisfaction and general life satisfaction. The upper division students' scores were highest, and then were the freshmen' and sophomores'. The juniors' were lowest.4. Online social support, internet self-efficacy, internet life satisfaction were significantly correlated with general life satisfaction. The college students' internet life satisfaction and internet self-efficacy influenced general life satisfaction directly, while internet self-efficacy influences general life satisfaction through internet life satisfaction. General life satisfaction was influenced not only by online social support directly, but also by internet self-efficacy and internet self-efficacy indirectly.