Happiness of the low-caste Indian adolescent students: An exploratory study

• Main Author: Arockiam, Singarayar
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Happiness; Caste-based discrimination; Educational Psychology; Student Counseling and Personnel Services
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdd_counseling/4; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=etdd_counseling
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study uncovers the ways low-caste adolescents experience happiness, the meaning they ascribe to their happiness, factors that enhance their happiness, and the way they maintain their happiness. Discriminated from birth, the low-caste adolescents experience an array of physical, psychological, intellectual, and social difficulties; however, the pursuit of basic psychological needs and social support functions as protective factors in maintaining their happiness. A qualitative method employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used on a purposive sample of 20 low-caste school-going adolescents from rural / semi-urban schools for the semi-structured interviews and the subsequent analysis. Results show that the Indian low-caste adolescents experience and continue to maintain happiness when they pursue a satisfactory level of relatedness, autonomy, competence, and social support. Also, their meaning of happiness is apparently ascribed to a deep sense of belongingness, acceptance of the reality of life, meeting the values of hard work, success, respect, trust, human dignity, equality, and fulfilling their relational obligations while enjoying a purposeful life by striving to achieve their goals through relentless pursuit. Implications are that these low-caste adolescents ought to be facilitated to develop close interpersonal relationships, including inter-caste relationships, responsible autonomy, competence, and social support.