Resilience's Impact on Coping with Life's Challenges

Throughout years, many researchers have studied how resilience affect one’s ability to handle life’s challenges through self-inner emotions that are taking place. With my paper, one will be introduced to a fraction of that research conducted via a series of surveys. A total of 207 students were split into three groups. One group participated in a survey catered to answer the question of whether or not there was a correlation between resilience and self-esteem. The second group participated in a survey catered to answer the question of whether or not there was a correlation between resilience and self-efficacy.

Lastly, the third group participated in a survey catered to answer the question of whether or not there was a correlation between resilience and pessimism.

The results showed that there is a correlation between resilience and self-esteem, resilience and self-efficacy, and resilience and pessimism. Though the research resulted in proven correlation I do believe that there are many factors that can sway away from my results given a different environment or even given a different time of day.

Resilience and its Association with Self-esteem, Self-efficacy, and Pessimism in College Students. Have you ever wondered if there was a correlation between resilience, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and pessimism? With further research one can find a conclusion to that question but first let’s define what those terms are. Resilience reflects the ability to confront, handle and rise above stressful life events, ongoing tribulations, and problematic experiences.

This has encouraged many questions about the relationship between one’s inner emotions, how they feel about themselves, and whether a positive or negative resiliency has taken effect.

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The three main personality factors that most people face are self-esteem, self-efficacy, and pessimism. In the past three decades, resilience research has grown in popularity, and various models have emerged, as well as criticisms about the usefulness of this construct in psychology. It has brought many researchers to question how we see ourselves, and whether this affects our resilience. Self-esteem is an individual who has confidence within themselves and is able to interpret their self-worth. Many studies have focused on self-esteem and resiliency of adolescents who battle with a large number of stress factors for many years. Several researchers have considered that self-esteem is a big part of resilience at the individual level.

In one study, researchers were able test whether there is a relationship between resilience and self-esteem by using the resilience questionnaire and the coopersmith self-esteem inventory scale on High school students. Resilience questionnaire was to determine their characteristics of resiliency and protective factors and Coopersmith Self-esteem inventory scale was used to measure their self-esteem. Participants were randomly chosen from Cumhuriyet and the Industrial Vocational High school. All students were asked not to write their names. Once students completed their questionnaires and inventory scales, all data was collected. Researchers were now able to see the relations between resiliency and self-esteem by using the Pearson moment correlation coefficient test. Researchers observed that there is a significant relationship between resilience and self-esteem in a positive aspect and it is also determined that self-esteem and resilience findings is interpreted to explain that as self-esteem of an individual self-worth increases, their resilience also increases.

Self-efficacy is a personality trait that is likely to reject negativity about themselves and has the belief that they have the ability to achieve their ambitions. People with high Self-efficacy is known to exert much effort into their accomplishments to success. Many studies have shown that parents with high self‐efficacy is positively associated with parenting competence, such as mother’s interactive behavior with their infants, and with child outcomes, such as academic and social competence. In this study, researchers studied the effect of parent’s confidence in parenting self-efficacy when they are challenged with caring for their infants with negative temperament. The subjects were to be assessed within 32 weeks of pregnancy, 3 months after pregnancy and 12 months after birth. All subjects were given the Maternal Self-efficacy in the Nurturing role Questionnaire and Infant Behavior Questionnaire from each of those time frames. They were able to measure there parenting self-efficacy and depressive symptoms. The researchers have found that high resilience group showed an increase in parenting self-efficacy.

Pessimism is a negative thought process that believes the worst of an outcome will take place. In this experiment, explored a basketball teams resilience test by having the coach give failure feedback pertaining their dribbling performance. People who has an optimistic outlook would usually do better than people who has a pessimistic outlook on things they are surrounded by in life (Peterson & Park, 1998). From a suburban high school, students volunteered to answer a questionnaire assessing attribution style in sport at the beginning of the year. All volunteered subjects practiced basketball at least for one year as part of a sport class in school. In the first test, participants who were more pessimistic were given negative feedback after a dribbling exercise was performed and participants who were optimistic were also given negative feedback after a dribbling exercise. They were then asked to take a sport explanatory questionnaire. Results have showed that participants with a more pessimistic style would showed less resiliency in performance.

In my current study, the aim is to test weather resilience is significantly associated with self-esteem, self-efficacy, and pessimism among college students. Since such exposure of influences and their relationship to resilience we analyzed, this study will show a positive insight in research pertaining to resiliency. For my first study, I predict that high self-esteem will be strong and positively associated with resiliency. Self-esteem and resilience will be significantly correlated. In addition, I predict positive self-efficacy will be strong and positively connected with resiliency. Self-efficacy and resilience will be significantly correlated. Lastly, I predict that less pessimism will have more resilience. Pessimism and resilience will be significantly correlated.

Paper was used to distribute the surveys and pencils were used by participants to fill out the survey. Every survey included 10 questions that were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale. For survey A, resilience and self-esteem numbers (4, 8, 9) were reversed coded. Resilience questions from the resilience items  were combined with self-esteem questions adapted from the self-esteem scale item. Examples of items that were used to asses self-esteem included “I feel that I can handle many things at a time”. For survey B, resilience and self-efficacy numbers (4, 7, 10) were reverse coded. Self-efficacy questions were adapted from the self-scale item (Sherer & Maddux 1982) and (Zimmerman & Bandurara, 1992). Examples of items that were used to asses self-efficacy included “I am not able to adapt to change”.

For survey C, resilience and pessimism numbers (4,6, 8,10) were reverse coded. Resilience were combined with Pessimism questions were adapted from the pessimism scale item. Examples of items that were used to asses self-efficacy included “Things often work out the way that I want them to”. We were paired with a partner and walked around Hunter college campus at 5:45pm. We randomly gave out surveys to students, with most surveys given out in the library, cafeteria, and the lobby. After all surveys were completed, they were given back to professor Malvar who is the lead researcher. As a class, we were able to come back together and determine which statements were good enough to keep or needed to be reverse-coded. We identified the reverse coded items from all three surveys and calculated the scores for each completed survey. We then entered data into SPSS along with other valuable information such as the gender and age.

Discussion

The results of the study were consistent in all results because it is proven that all results have a positive correlation but one that was a negative correlation. In survey A, there was a strong positive significant correlation between resilience and self-esteem. Which makes sense if we were to compare it to our previous research study that was done. There were high school students who goes through many life changes and was able to fill out a few questionnaires that was able to measure their self-esteem and resiliency. It confirms that if a student self-esteem is low it is more likely that their resiliency will also be low and if their self-esteem were to be high their resiliency will also be high. Both research studies result to as a positive correlation.

In survey B, the results of this study were also consistent. We have found that there is a significant relationship between resiliency and self-efficacy. An individual that has a high self-efficacy their resiliency will be high. This is also considered to be a moderate positive correlation. In research studies, showed the effect on parents’ confidence in parenting self-efficacy when faced with caring for their infants’ weather they had a negative or positive temperament. Results of this testing has also confirmed the similarity of these results with our study.

In survey C, results for this study was also consistent. We found that there is a significant correlation between resilience and pessimism. An individual that has more resilience will have less pessimism. This is considered to have a moderate negative correlation. This result also makes sense because if we compare it to previous research study, negative feedback that was given to students on their dribbling performance. When they measured the student’s resiliency by the questionnaire they had taken, it showed that the students did indeed show more resilience even when they were less pessimistic.

From the beginning of my paper, there were predictions and questions that were posed regarding the correlation between resiliency and personality traits. All predictions that was made were correct from the current data that was found. It is proven, that resiliency does have a significant relationship with self-esteem, self-efficacy and pessimism. One of the questions that was asked, was how we see ourselves and does that affect our resilience? From the results that we found, we can say by the way we view our self, through life experiences and changes, we obtain personality traits that plays an impact on weather our resiliency will be taken into effect. By the analysis we conducted, there is a significant relationship. Weather self-esteem, self-efficacy or pessimism is high or low it will always affect resiliency.

From our data, I do believe that there are still questions that needs to be addressed. One of the questions that should be issued is what can be some factors that may affect personality traits that may also affect resiliency? A few reasons that this study may be inconclusive or limited could be a third variable problem. Which means that the two variables are correlated but a 3rd variable that we may not know can either affect one or both variables. Another reason is when collecting data, participants were not asked if they were a Hunter college student even when they were on campus. Data were only collected in the evening time, so the time of the day may have affected their mood to be low and in the morning may have a higher mood. Another possible cause could also be the area that the data was collected, this give us different variety of groups.

A possible future study could focus on the effects of resilience on all five personality traits. In this case, this would open up more doors for questions to predict the correlations among other variables. One study that would be interesting is investigating other effects of personality traits under pressure. Another study is studying the effects of self-efficacy and pessimism. In the future study we could have participants play a sport game that was never played before and test to see how long their determination would go despite the negative feedback’s that are given. This could physically show how far individuals’ resilience would go despite the unsupported group. Studies like these can give us a focal point on the effects of resilience and new things ahead.

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Resilience's Impact on Coping with Life's Challenges. (2021, Dec 17). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/research-to-examine-how-resilience-affects-the-ability-to-cope-with-life-s-challenges/

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