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Show t,-j' ijj nnsannimnimg Ilimiteipesit Utah residents are happy, survey says Most Utahns are satisfied with marriage, parenting and life in general, according to a statewide random survey by the University of Utah. The research was conducted by the Survey Research Center, a computer-assisted telephone interviewing inter-viewing system operated by the Division of Social Research. Drs. Sally A. Lloyd and Joe F. Pittman of the Department of Family and Consumer Con-sumer Studies analyzed the data. When asked to rate the happiness of their lives in general, 75 percent of the Utah adults surveyed indicated their lives were happy. "At the same time," said Lloyd, "life is not without stress in Utah. Of those surveyed, 57 percent indicated moderate to high levels of financial stress and 39 percent reported moderate to high stress in their home lives." Eighty-five percent of married adults felt their marriages were happy. Only 13 percent of parents surveyed said parenting was difficult, dif-ficult, while 67 percent felt parenting was relatively easy. However, Lloyd and Pittman said these figures vary according to family composition. Single parents report much higher levels of financial finan-cial stress than any other family type. Eighty-two percent of the single parents indicated moderate to heavy financial stress, while only 63 percent of married parents and 57 percent of single adults reported moderate to heavy financial stress. Married people without children at home experienced the least financial finan-cial stress, with only 34 percent reporting moderate to heavy finan- , cial stress. The figures for levels of stress in home life were similar, say Lloyd and Pittman. Sixty-nine percent of single parents reported moderate to high levels of stress at home versus 40 percent of married parents, 38 percent of single adults and only 27 percent of married adults without children at home. "Even though single parents report higher levels of financial and home stress, they rate parenting as only slightly more difficult than do married parents," said Pittman. Twenty-one percent of the single parents surveyed indicated parenting paren-ting was difficult, as compared with 16 percent of married parents. Survey results also show differences dif-ferences in life satisfaction as a function of marital status and presence of children, according to Lloyd and Pittman. Married people reported the highest levels of happiness hap-piness 83 percent as opposed to 71 percent of never-married people, 70 percent of widowed people and 45 percent of divorced people. Conversely, 57 percent of single parents said they were happy as opposed op-posed to 81 percent of married parents. The survey results are based on telephone interviews with 810 randomly ran-domly selected Utah adults conducted con-ducted in July and August 1985. The results can be generalized to all Utah households with a possible error er-ror of plus or minus four percentage points, according to Lloyd and Pittman. Pitt-man. Questions asked in the survey were commissioned by Lloyd, Pittman Pitt-man and Dr. Cheryl Wright, also of the Department of Family and Consumer Con-sumer Studies, as the beginning of a long-term study on the quality of family life in Utah. |