An Explanatory Model for Subjective Well-Being: A Study with Masters and PhD Students in Brazil

The main objective of the current study is to map the relationships among stressors, stress, coping, and subjective well-being in Master's and PhD students in Brazil. It has also been drawn up an explanatory model of the determination of subjective well-being in the mentioned population. Participants were 2150 Master's and PhD students in Brazil, from the five regions of the country and from all major knowledge areas of CAPES (Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior). The instruments used were a questionnaire about stressors in post-graduate programs, the Perceived Stress Scale, the Ways of Coping Scale, and the Scale of Subjective Well-Being. Finally, it was found that the model of subjective well-being, tested by path analysis, denoted satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices and corroborated the theoretical assumption.