ABSTRACT

‘What is the good life?’ Few empirical studies explore how American college students answer this important question. In this grounded theory study, we analysed the responses of 276 American college students in two phases. In the first phase, we examined responses from 109 students at 10 different universities. In the second phase, we added interviews with an additional 167 students at one of the universities. Based on our coding, we found students’ visions of the good life were comprised of 24 unique ingredients; the most common being having a stable or passion-inspired career, being married, having children, continuing advanced learning, and being financially stable. We also discovered that eight distinct clusters of ingredients accounted for three-fourths of student responses. The clusters included American dreamers, happy strivers, comfort, and stability seekers, ECL (enjoy work, have comfort, limited family) students, family cultivators, singular career strivers, moral strivers, and God-followers.

摘要

“什么是美好生活？” 很少有实证研究探讨美国大学生如何回答这个重要问题。在这项扎根理论研究中，我们分两个阶段分析了 276 名美国大学生的反应。在第一阶段，我们研究了来自 10 所不同大学的 109 名学生的反馈。在第二阶段，我们增加了对其中一所大学另外 167 名学生的采访。根据我们的编码，我们发现学生对美好生活的憧憬由 24 种独特的成分组成；最常见的是拥有稳定或充满激情的职业、已婚、有孩子、继续深造以及经济稳定。我们还发现，八组不同的成分占学生反应的四分之三。这些群体包括美国梦想家、快乐的奋斗者、舒适的人、