Factors that Influence the Quality of Life Among Undergraduate School of Quantitative Sciences (SQS) Students in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The concept of quality of life broadly encompasses on how an individual measures the goodness of multiple aspects of their life, as there are number of challenges to develop a meaningful understanding of the quality of life. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that contribute to the quality of life among undergraduate SQS students. The respondents of this cross-sectional study were 273 undergraduate students from School of Quantitative Sciences, which was selected via convenient and snowball non-probability sampling method. The collection of the primary data was performed using a questionnaire including demographic and quality of life questions. Analysis of the data was conducted through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 2.6. All the 32 items are tested for its’ reliability using the Cronbach’s alpha, and KMO’s. The values are 0.891 and 0.876 respectively. According to the results, there are six factors that contribute/ influence the QoL for the undergraduate SQS students that involved in this study, which are family, friends, academic, social wellbeing, physical and financial, and environment. The value of Cronbach alpha for each factor indicates that the reliability of internal consistency is high and reliable and the KMO’s value for the factor pattern is meritorious and the Bartlett's test of sphericity also resulted with a significant value of p < 0.05.


Introduction
Quality of life (QoL) concept is mainly different for each person, as they measure the goodness of some aspect of their own life. Wellbeing also often referred with quality of life. Thus, quality of life can be described as life satisfaction that reflects his/her individual lifestyle which has been portrayal by themselves (Shareef et al., 2015). QoL is a perception of individual's position in life that mainly focus on the context of the value systems and culture that they live which relate to their expectation, goal, concerns and standard (World Health Organization, 2020). It is a broad comprise concept that affected in a complex way by the person's psychological state, physical health, personal belief, social connection and their relationship to salient traits of their surroundings.
www.msocialsciences.com among the university students, because of the process of formation occur at this place, where it is chosen professionally and personally by every student.
Additionally, the concept of QoL used to signify the general wellbeing of societies or persons. Students in the university record a low QoL and a worst perception of their health status, due to a greater circumstance of discomfort that they live throughout the journey of the study, specifically in course with a serious poignant load, for instance medical school (Messina, Quercioli, Troiano, Russo, Barbini, Nistico & Nante, 2016). Indicative list of QoL indicators are grouped in the categories of education, social, leisure/ recreation, health, nutrition, urbanization, communications, conditions and hazards, security, natural, shelter quality, economic conditions, soil quality, water quality and air quality. Next, murders and non-negligent manslaughter, burglary, robbery, forcible rape, the aggravated assault, total crime, average suspended particulate matter, congestion, auto theft and average benzene-soluble organic matter are the effect of the size of city on the magnitude of the aforementioned QoL indicators which have been investigated.
University are the new place for students because of the period of change for youngster in developing a new skills, gain knowledge, expand social network and experiences. Mostly students will be facing stressful and pressure life event because they mediate changes in community, relationships and lifestyle. High stress among students may affect the social and psychological aspect towards their life and their QoL. It is crucial to explore quality of life among the student, since they experience a variation of stressors in the university, which include stressful exams and hefty study burdens (Owusu & Essel, 2017). Alternatively, performance of academic is also a part of QoL. This is because students who have a good QoL can achieve better in academics (Ofoghi, Sadeghi & Bahaei, 2016). Barker, Howard, Galambos, and Wrosch (2016) found that commonly students that are happy displayed the highest enhancements in academic achievement over time. This positive quality of life has been made known to have a confirming influence on academic accomplishment among university students.
Generally, Arslan and Akkas (2014) stated that access and satisfaction to college academic resources, easy walking, transportation and areas for public interaction give a significant contribution to overall quality of college life. Student who have low confident can lack their social activity. Aripin and Puteh (2017) mentioned that a better QoL can be contributed by the social activities, such as engagement in resident associations and non-profit organizations. Past research from Messina, Querciolo, Troiano, Russo, Barbini, Nistico and Nante (2016) suggested that there are many factors that contribute in QoL among students compared to the general population and suggested that for further studies. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the factors that contribute to the quality of life among undergraduate SQS students in Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Quality of Life (QoL)
QoL is how people measured the goodness of their life in multiple aspects. Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith (1999) said it included an emotional reaction to sense of life satisfaction and fulfilment, life occurrences, disposition and contentment with personal relationship and work. Based on the 11th Malaysian Plan 2016-2020, improving the QoL is one of the major agendas and the main focus of Malaysian government.
In addition, QoL is a human need which are fulfilled with their perceptions of subjective wellbeing. Despite, it become a role of policy makers and professionals to provide opportunities for the people to be able to meet their desired wellbeing (Costanza et al., 2005). Idris et al (2016) said that QoL is one of the biggest challenges in reducing gap that exists between various groups and community. Generally, quality of life has increased positively with improvement in environment which include physical and natural surroundings, education, health status, age, culture, safety as well as economic development level (Yasin et al, 2012).

Variables in Quality of Life
Based on previous research, there are some variables or criteria that are part of quality of life. These include family, friends, environment, academic, financial and social activities (Golics, Basra, Finlay & Salek, 2013). Brennan & Rosenzweig (2008) found family supports usually consists formal and informal, and it will empower each of the family member to raise their degree of involvement in a changed life environment. Next, social support from friends and family have been related towards a physical health and positive mental, and some researchers suggested that to be the most consistent and important variable in individual health outcomes (Turner & Turner, 2013).
Significantly, Plagnol (as cited in Aripin & Puteh, 2017) defines that financial satisfaction as a fundamental part of overall life wellbeing and satisfaction. Financial and job security is the key element in measuring the studies regarding quality of life (Pajaziti, 2014). A better QoL can be contributed by the social activities, such as engagement in resident associations and non-profit organizations related (Aripin & Puteh, 2017). The consequence of carrying out activities on life satisfaction is a gauge of overall QoL.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
EFA is a part of factor analysis that is utilized to observe and measure variables that can be minimise to lower latent variables that share a common variance, and it is also applicable for the dimensionality reduction (Bartholomew, Knott & Moustaki, 2011). Exploratory factor analysis is a method where researcher wants to determine the number of factors influence the variables and to analyse which variable need to belong together (DeCoster, 1998).
Clearly, McDonald (1985) explained a basic hypothesis of EFA that have the standard latent factors to be discovered in the dataset. Next, the goal in EFA is to identify the minimal value of common factors. Exploratory factor analysis is widely utilized and broadly applied in statistical method. Lovett, Zeiss and Heinemann (2002) said exploratory factor analysis was used for a variation of application, likes to develop an instrument for the evaluation of school principal, to determine the types of services that should be offered to college students (Majors & Sedlacek, 2001) and to assess the incentive of high school students in Puerto Rican (Morris, 2001).

The Development of Construct Items
The quality of life instrument was developed and made up of the six aspects of interest to determine the factors that influence the QoL. These aspects are based on the previous study.  Figure 1 shows the six aspects of QoL in which 60 items were embedded in order to examine the factors that contribute to the QoL. All the items were constructed according to the previous study regarding the student quality of life.

Family
Friends Academic Social Financial Environment www.msocialsciences.com

Instrument
The instrument that has been applied in this study is Google form survey or questionnaire. It consists of section A and section B. In section A, it has included all the demographic details such as races, gender, course, current year of study and current CGPA. Meanwhile, Section B was constructed with 60 items from the six aspects that related to QoL of undergraduate student.
Next, the validity process in this study was conducted through content validity. In this process, the instrument was verified by the expert before distributed it to the respondents. Lastly, the reliability of the variable is tested by using Cronbach's alpha to confirm the data are reliable, acceptable and have an excellent internal consistency to the analysis.

Measurement Scale
The instrument for this study was established based on the 60 developed items and intend to identify the factors that influence QoL among undergraduate student. All the items were measured at individual level. In section A, there was some closed-ended questions such as races, gender, course, current year of study and current CGPA were asked. Section B which consists of 60 items related to quality of life has employed the 7-point semantic scale. These 7 points were range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) and the measurement scale is construct to measure the quality of life among undergraduate SQS students.

Data Collection
This study involves a primary data source, where the data collection was conducted using convenient and snowball non-probability sampling. The Google form survey are distributed through online platform, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, with help from undergraduate friends and lecturers who are currently teaching undergraduate SQS students as our referrals to distribute the questionnaire to our selected sample.
According to the School of Quantitative Sciences (SQS) official website, the total of active undergraduate students in School of Quantitative Sciences is 899 students. Therefore, the total population in this study is 899 students that included all three courses for undergraduate SQS students, which are Decision Science (451), Business Mathematics (232) and Industrial Statistics (216). Next, it is impractical to estimate the sample size if the data collection is conducted using nonprobability sampling. However, there is a time frame for the data collection, which is three months, starting from May to July 2020, and based on this time frame, the total data collection was 273 respondents.

Data Analysis
This study used exploratory factor analysis, because it is appropriate to fulfill the objective of this study, since it is often utilized to minimize the number of variables and to examine the internal consistency between variables (Williams & Brown, 2010). Then, the test of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy, and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity are conducted to assess the reliability of the factor analysis. The recommended Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index is above 0.60 and the Bartlett's Test of Sphericity is significant for p-value < 0.05 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
Next, the factors are retained based on the eigenvalue that greater than one and the cumulative percentage of variance that exceed 50%. Besides that, the scree plot also useful to identify the number of factors to be retain. Lastly, the method of extraction used are principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal varimax rotation, since these methods were commonly used in factor analysis.
www.msocialsciences.com Based on Table 2, Cronbach's alpha value (0.902) exceed 0.60. Hence, this indicates that the questionnaires are reliable to proceed with the analysis. Next, Table 3 illustrates that the KMO value of 0.872, which greater than 0.6 and the Bartlett's test shows the significant value since the p-value is lower than 0.05, which represent the data is acceptable for the factor analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal varimax rotation being applied in this factor analysis, since it is the most common method used by researchers. Table 4 shows that there are six factors should be retained since the eigenvalue greater than one with cumulative variance of 54.545%.  Figure 2 demonstrates the scree plot graph with the eigenvalue on vertical axis against the component/ factor number on the horizontal axis. The first sixth components show the values in the figure is immediately above. While, the next factor shows almost the flat until the last factor as the eigenvalue decrease, which is mean that the successive factors are consider for smaller amount of total variance explained.  Table 5, there are six factors that can be obtained from the factor rotation according to the factor loading. Awang (2018) suggested that the factor loading should be greater 0.6 to ensure the factor will be reliable for the next analysis. Hence, each item for the factor is selected based on the factor loading value with cut point of 0.6. In Factor 1 there are 9 items that comprises the factor loading range between 0.698 to 0.871. Furthermore, for Factor 2, the factor loadings are between 0.635 to 0.704 with 6 items. In addition, Factor 3 comprises of 7 items and the factor loading range between 0.609 until 0.824. Factor 4 with 3 items and factor loading range between 0.630 to 0.707. Factor 5 comprises 4 items with the range of factor loading 0.605 until 0.772. Finally, Factor 6 consist of 3 items with factor loading in range 0.634 to 0.697.

Results and Findings
www.msocialsciences.com From 60 items, 28 items have been eliminated after factor analysis because the factor loading of the item is less than 0.6 and not reliable for this analysis. All the 32 items that remained are tested for reliability. Table 6 and Table 7 displays that the Cronbach's alpha and KMO for 32 items left with value of 0.891 and 0.876 respectively. All Cronbach's alpha for each variable and KMO was exceed the minimum value of 0.6, which indicates that the items and the factors that contribute to the QoL are acceptable and reliable. Lastly, the Bartlett's test also displays a significant with p-value less than 0.05.

Conclusion
There are six factors that contribute to the QoL for the undergraduate SQS student, which are family, friends, academic, social wellbeing, physical and financial, and environment. Next, the value of Cronbach alpha for the six factors is 0.891, which indicates the reliability to measure the internal consistency is high and reliable. Besides for the factor pattern, the KMO's value is 0.876 and the Bartlett's Test of Sphericity shows to be significant.