Examination of The Levels of Happiness and Self-Improvement Tendencies Among Unemployed Housewives

This is a descriptive study aiming to examine whether the levels of happiness and self-improvement tendencies of unemployed housewives significantly differ according to certain personal variables. Selected using “convenient sampling”, the study group consists of 321 housewives who were unemployed. The data was collected using the “Oxford Happiness Inventory” (short version), “Self-Improvement Tendency Scale”, and a “Personal Information Form”, for which all validity and reliability studies have been performed. SPSS 21 software pack was used for data analysis, for which One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Tukey Test were performed with a significance level of .05. According to the study results, the following reasons were identified for unemployment among housewives: for looking after kids, due to reluctance to work, because of the husband’s unwillingness to allow his wife to work, since working is not deemed proper for women in traditional mentality, due to lack of jobs, and other reasons. The results revealed that 49.1% of the housewives have low levels of happiness, while 50.9% have high happiness levels, meaning that the housewives have similar levels of happiness. On the other hand, 40.2% of the housewives have low levels of self-improvement tendencies, while the levels are high for 59.8%. No significant difference was detected between the housewives’ happiness levels according to their education levels. Yet, their levels of self-improvement tendencies significantly differ with their education levels. The housewives who graduated from a university have significantly higher levels of self-improvement tendencies than the primary school graduates. University graduates were also found to have significantly higher levels of self-improvement tendencies when compared to the housewives who graduated from high schools. No significant difference was detected between the housewives’ self-improvement tendencies levels according to their economic income. Yet, their levels of the happiness significantly differ with their economic income. Housewives with a medium level of economic income were found to have significantly higher happiness levels than the housewives with low levels of economic income. Similarly, housewives with high economic income are significantly happier than those with low income levels