A Genetic Study On Flow Experience & The Correlation Analysis Between Flow And Study-engagement In Shandong Undergraduates’ Subjective Well-being

With the popularization of higher education in China,the number of college students is increasing year by year.As one of the core groups of society,college students’ mental health is very important.Subjective well-being is an important part of college students’ mental health,which refers to the overall evaluation of one’s life quality in emotional and cognitive level.Flow experience and student study-engagement are the main evaluation indicators and important influencing factors of students’ subjective well-being.Flow refers to a positive emotional experience that when people devote themselves to an activity that they are very interested in.Study-engagement has an important impact on student’s academic achievements,campus relationships,and mental health.Flow experience and student study-engagement both play an important role in college students’ subjective well-being.The purpose of this study was to explore the genetic basis of flow experience in Shandong college student population,and locate the related SNPs of flow experience,and analyze the correlation between flow and study-engagement and their possible shared genetic basis.We performed blood sample collection and online questionnaire survey on 896 students in Shandong Jining Medical University.The questionnaire included the flow measuring sub-questionnaire and the student study-engagement measuring sub-questionnaire.14 candidate SNPs were selected for genotyping on the Mass ARRAY platform.SPSS and R software were used to analyze the association between candidate gene loci and flow/study-engagement respectively,and MANCOVA was used to compare the difference of genotype frequency in flow’s nine dimensions.The correlation analysis between flow and study-engagement was through Pearson correlation coefficient analysis.Our studies suggested that rs11191454 in AS3 MT gene and rs454214 in MEF2C gene might be associated with flow(adjusted P value:0.004;P value:0.005),and rs454214 also showed significant differences in study-engagement(adjusted P=0.003)in overdominant model.The Pearson correlation coefficient analysis showed that flow and study-engagement were strongly correlated(Pearson correlation coefficient:0.75).In summary,this study found rs11191454 and rs454214 might be flow-related SNPs.Our study suggested that flow and study-engagement were strongly positive correlated.rs454214 in MEF2 C gene was associated with both of them,and it might be a new shared genetic locus between flow and study-engagement.