Examining Elements Of Positive Relationships Via Facebook Among Undergraduate Students At A Malaysian Public University
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Date
2017-08
Authors
Ooi, Shok Hong
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Positive relationships are part of the human’s needs that facilitates an individual subjective well-being. Nevertheless, the term positive relationships have not been clearly defined and researchers in this field have not looked into the elements of positive relationships in details. The explosion of online social interactions has also raised the question of relationships quality in online social networking sites. The aim of this study is to investigate positive relationships via Facebook. More specifically, this study aims to examine the elements of positive relationships in Facebook context and thus contributes to clearer definition of the term positive relationships. Based on the literature review, three elements have been identified as the major focus; perceived social support, trust and interactions. In addition, other elements that make up positive relationships in Facebook have also been explored. In order to further understand elements of positive relationships, relationships between perceived social support, trust and interaction with subjective well-being were examined. In this study, the subjective well-being is indicated by positive emotions, negative emotions and life satisfaction. Participants were 800 students from a public university in Northern Malaysia. The sampling approach used was purposive sampling. This study was conducted through online survey. The questionnaire was used to measure the participants’ level of perceived social support, trust, interaction, positive emotions, negative emotions and life satisfaction. The findings of this study showed that perceived social support, trust and interaction has significant positive correlation with university students’ subjective well-being. In addition, these elements also significantly contributed to the subjective well-being in general. In this study, the strongest predictor of positive emotion, negative emotion and life satisfaction was perceived social support. In order to get more detailed results another multiple regression (stepwise) analysis was run for the sources of perceived social support and subjective well-being. The analysis showed that perceived social support from friends was the strongest predictor of positive and negative emotions. For life satisfaction, the strongest predictor was perceived social support from significant others. This study also found that positive emotion, motivation, closeness and understanding as the other possible elements that facilitate the positive relationships in online context. Findings of the current study contributes to clearer definition of positive relationships and highlights how Facebook can be the medium to facilitate positive relationships. Lastly, suggestions on how sampling technique and data collection method can be improved in future research have been discussed.
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Keywords
Positive relationships via Facebook , social support, trust and interactions