engleski

Comparing different methodological approaches in understanding students' resilience

Academic domain occupies considerable share of students' life and can be viewed as a social context which encompasses different elements that can play important role in quality of life. The opportunities for acquiring professional skills and knowledge, building self-efficacy, developing personal strengths, proactive motivation due to aspects of professional identity are just some of them. When student's capacities meet typical requirements, his/her sense of competence enhances. The need for competence is considered to be one of basic psychological needs and satisfaction of that need was found to be one of crucial factors that facilitate intrinsic motivation. More importantly, sense of competence and mastery is recognized as a relevant aspect of psychological well-being. Therefore, satisfaction of need for competence can be viewed as an important positive outcome, especially in academic context. Nevertheless, in daily academic life students often face unfavourable circumstances or challenging situations (e.g. overwhelming workload, extensive or scattered class schedule, interpersonal conflicts). Though not comparable to major adverse life events, if experienced often, even these daily stressors may hinder one's capacities to cope with usual requirements and, consequently, may have detrimental effects on person's sense of competence. This study aims to explore different approaches in understanding students' resilience. In a pilot study we identified several typical stressful situations in students' academic daily life. Main study included students rating frequency of occurrence of these daily stressors, self- assessment of one's typical reactions to unfavourable events (The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire) in academic context, self-ratings of resilience (Brief Resilience scale), qualitative data on one's personal strengths and self-rated sense of competence (Basic Psychological Needs Scale). Following variable-based approach, we examined in what way daily stressors, emotion regulation strategies, self-perceived resilience and their interactions predict students' sense of competence. Employing person-based approach, we identified four groups of students according to two criteria (reporting high / low occurrence of daily stressors and reporting higher / lower levels of competence) and analysed differences between the most resilient students and other groups. Discussion is focused on practical implications of these different methodological approaches.

students, resilience, daily stressors, emotion regulation, competence

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