THE DEVELOPMENT OF HAPPINESS MEASUREMENT IN A BUDDHIST WAY FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This research aims to develop a tool for measuring Buddhist happiness for high school students. The sample consisted of 503 high school students studying in the Bangkok metropolitan area. They were divided into two groups; the first group for discrimination power assessment were 119 students and the second group for Reliability and Construct Validity assessment were 384 students. The measurement used in this research was Buddhist happiness open-ended questionnaire, that came from Sa-mis-sa-suk and Ni-ra-mis-sa-suk of Phra Brahmagunabhorn. The Buddhist happiness of this research consisted of 4 levels of happiness, which was tested statistically in this research. The results of this research revealed that the discrimination power were between .183 - .459, the t-test with percentile 25 showed that all questions could divide high and low level of happiness in high school students, and has its significance at .05 and reliability of the questionnaire was .772. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Buddhist happiness questionnaire model was fitted with the empirical data with x²  = 297.42; df = 269; p-value = 0.11255; GFI = 0.94; AGFI = 0.93; CFI = 0.983; RMSEA = 0.017; SRMR = 0.043.