Author(s): Mayurakshee Gangopadhyay and Dr. Debomita Sikdar

Abstract:
The aim of the present study is to find out the effect of personal values on psychological well-being of urban and rural youth. To serve this objective a sample of 600 youth were selected by stratified random sampling. They were college students aged between 18-21 years. The data was collected from Kolkata and its adjacent areas. A general information schedule, Personal Values Questionnaire by Sherry and Verma (1978) and Psychological Well-Being Scale by Sisodia and Choudhary (2005) were administered on the samples. The findings revealed that the means of dimensions of values like democratic, aesthetic, economic, knowledge, hedonistic and power value and dimensions of psychological well being like satisfaction, efficiency, sociability, mental health, interpersonal relations and over all psychological well-being are higher in case of urban youth than rural youth. And for other dimensions of values like religious, social, family prestige and health value the mean values of rural youth are higher than that of the urban youth. But rural youth are not higher in any dimension of psychological well-being than the urban youth. It also showed that there is significant difference between rural and urban youth in terms of values and psychological well-being. There exists significant impact of values on psychological well-being of youth. Life satisfactions, efficiency, sociability, mental health, inter personal relations etc. are major components of a person’s psychological well-being that get shaped or influenced by the value system being it an important socio-cultural component.