CORRELATES OF HAPPINESS AMONG MUSLIM WOMEN STUDENTS IN WOMEN CENTRE FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION SOKOTO STATE, NORTHERN NIGERIA.

Abstract

Despite burgeoning researches on happiness in different fields of psychology, anthropology, and economics, in the west on Judeo-Christians and on men, fewer researches were conducted on correlates of happiness among Muslims especially Women in the African context. World happiness report (WHR) reported that Nigeria was ranked as the 5th happiest nation and 6th in Africa, however fewer researches of happiness in Nigeria were reported especially in Northern Nigeria. It investigated the relationship between happiness, culture, socio-economic status and religious coping, among Muslim women students. Quantitative design of the correlational type was used, the population of 900 students from women centers for continuing education (WCCE) and 269 samples using a purposive sampling method. Orientation to happiness scale (OHS) with the reliability of 0.953, cultural questionnaire for women (CQW) with a coefficient of 0.918, a demographic questionnaire socio-economic status scale (SESS) with 0.717 reliability co-efficient and Islamic religious coping scale (IRCOPE) with alpha 0.888 were the instruments used for data collection, generally named happiness, culture, socio-economic status and religious coping scale with a total coefficient of 0.937. Partial least square based on structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the data. It revealed that a statistically significant positive relationship between happiness, culture and religious coping, while SES was not significantly related to happiness among Muslim women students.