A Study of Meaning in Life, Social Well Being and Resilience among Indigenous People

Shailendra Kumar Sharma; Pragyendu; Monica Gangmei

Volume : V, Issue : XII, December - 2015

A Study of Meaning in Life, Social Well Being and Resilience among Indigenous People

Shailendra Kumar Sharma, Pragyendu, Monica Gangmei

Abstract :

The present study examines the Meaning in Life, Social Well Being and Resilience among Indigenous Peoples. A total of 104 Indigenous peoples (tribes) and six communities, three each from both India and South East Asian countries respectively were randomly selected. Outside India participants: 26.9% belongs to Myanmar, 6.7% from Cambodia, 18.3% from Taiwan. The average or common age of the participants is around 26 years. And the majority participants are students. Various tools were used such as Meaning in Life’s questionnaire, scale of Social wellbeing and Brief resilience scale. In this study we find that Indian participants scored higher in present as well as future dimensions of Meaning in Life as compared to outside India indigenous peoples. This means that, Indian tribal have more clear sense of meaning in their life and at the same time, they are continuously searching for something which makes their life significant. However in Social wellbeing, indigenous peoples outside India score more in the dimensions of Self–acceptance, Autonomy and Environmental mastery while in India, indigenous peoples (tribal) have higher Personal growth and higher Purpose in life. A positive correlation was found between Meaning in life and Social wellbeing, it shows that if future dimension of Meaning in Life is decreased or increased, then the dimensions of Social wellbeing will also be decreased or increased respectively. And present dimension of Meaning in life is positively correlated with Resilience. Whereas, future dimension of Meaning in life and total Wellbeing is positively related with Resilience but correlation/coefficient is not significant. Significant mean differences were found and discussed.