Psychometric Properties of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire in the Greek Secondary Educational Context

Introduction: Happy people are distinguished by sociability and strong social and emotional relationships. Moreover, they are distinguished by extroversion and are to a greater extent pleasant to their friends compared to the less happy people. Some result of extroversion is that happy people create more and more stable friends and do not refuse to help those in need and to accept help from others. Happy people have a stronger immune system, so they are to a greater extent healthy and are longer-lived.

Aim: The purpose of this research was: a) to cross validate the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (short-form) in the Greek secondary educational context and b) to investigation of gender as factor for differentiating the subjective happiness of secondary school students.

Material & Method: The sample of the survey consisted of 274 male (140) and female students (134) who attended the 7th (105), 8th (89) and 9th (80) class of middle school. The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002) was used to collect the data. The statistical analyses carried out were descriptive statistics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, test-retest reliability and One-Way ANOVA analysis.

Results: The statistical analysis of the data showed: a. the validity and stability of the Greek version of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, b. the gender is a factor of differentiation with male students presenting a higher mean of subjective happiness than female students. Conclusions: The results confirmed the suitability of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire for the Greek school environment during physical education lesson.