Resilience, Optimism and Social Support among International Students

Abstract

This study focuses on the examination of the relationship between resilience, optimism and social support among international students. International students who are studying as foreign students tend to experience greater stress and anxiety during their study. They need to adjust to the new environment and overcome challenges. The resilience level of students is very important as it can help them adjust their life pressures and stresses. The current study aims to look at the levels and patterns of resilience, optimism and social support among international students. The instruments used were Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) for resilience, Life Orientation Test Revised (LOT-R) for optimism and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) for social support. A total of 291 international students were involved in the study. The findings revealed a significant difference in the resiliency level across races, with African students scoring higher than others. The regression analysis employed showed that optimism (B=. 593) and social support (B=. 204) are significant predictors of resilience.

Relationships Between Stress and Psychosocial Factors with Sources of Help-Seeking Among International Students

“…This suggests that social connectedness serves as a major resource that impacts psychological distress. Further supporting these findings, recent studies found social connectedness significantly predicted resiliency (Sabouripour & Roslan, 2015) and subjective well-being (Du & Wei, 2015) for international students. Finally, research indicates that participation in social events (such as socialization with domestic students) significantly predicted positive social adjustment in a population of international students (Campbell, 2011;Glass, 2014).…”

Teacher Profiles of Psychological Capital and Their Relationship with Burnout

“…Hope and optimism both allude to the development of positive future expectations about achieving desired objectives [65], while efficacy and resilience both have the characteristic of perseverance in the face of difficulties [66]. Both optimism and resilience are characterized by flexibility and adaptability to circumstances [67,68], and efficacy and hope share what Snyder [69] defined as willpower, referring to the motivation and energy needed to reach a particular goal [63]. Consequently, one may hypothesize that teachers with an HHO/LER profile would be characterized by having high future expectations about achieving professional objectives but lacking the capacity to persist and maintain efforts focused on the task when faced with obstacles to their objectives.…”

“…So, it seems that the high scores in optimism and resilience that this group of teachers exhibit are associated with a moderately low likelihood of experiencing depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment. In other words, by virtue of these high levels of optimism and resilience, these teachers exhibit high flexibility and adaptability to events [67,68], which is related to a relatively low susceptibility to apathy and cynicism in their workplace interactions, and with a moderately low tendency to develop a desire to change jobs. However, low efficacy, together with a very low level of hope, means little confidence and energy to successfully carry out tasks [63], which would drastically affect motivation and teachers' beliefs in their abilities to respond to the demands of their profession.…”

Transição, resiliência e praxe. Estudos na Universidade dos Açores.

“…A resiliência na amostra de estudantes recém-entrados na Universidade dos Açores apresenta níveis moderados (Tabela 1), sem diferenças estatisticamente significativas entre sexos, tal como se encontra em alguma da investigação realizada por outros autores (Sabouripour & Rolan, 2015). Embora as raparigas tendam a manifestar maior similitude, comparativamente aos rapazes, quanto ao tipo de resposta que exibem (menor variabilidade), a única situação que, do ponto de vista da significância estatística, distingue raparigas e rapazes, com resultados mais elevados naquelas, é referente à subescala Autodisciplina, da ER, indicando que elas desenvolvem uma perceção mais forte acerca da sua capacidade de auto-organização para a resolução de tarefas.…”

“…Parece não se relacionar com a área específica de formação, e com o sexo gera resultados inconclusivos, aparecendo umas vezes os estudantes masculinos com um nível de resiliência superior (Erdogan, Ozdoganb, Erdogan, 2015) e outras vezes não se registam diferenças com significado estatístico entre rapazes e raparigas (Sabouripour & Rolan, 2015). Uma correlação negativa tende a ocorrer com a ansiedade (Wagnild & Colins, 2009).…”