Predictors of psychological resilience

There were two predictors that had effects on psychological resilience in

British students. They comprised of performance in comparison with friends and teacher support. Firstly, the students who perceived that their academic performance might be better than other friends, were likely to have the high levels of psychological resilience. It seems possible that these results are explained by the fact that when these students felt confident and believed in their own abilities, they were able to maintain their mental health and adjust themselves to achieve their academic goals in spite of the stress and difficulties. These results seemed to be consistent with a previous study that showed that resilient students tended to exhibit more engaging behaviour, for instance, attending class and school on time and preparing and taking part in class activities (Finn & Rock, 1997). They also corroborated the findings of Yeager &

125

Dweck (2012) who proposed that students who thought or were taught that their internal abilities could be improved, were likely to exhibit the higher levels of achievement and higher levels of course completion despite negative circumstances.

Additionally, the results in this study found that teacher support was positively related to psychological resilience in British students. This means the students who received more support from their teacher, obtained higher levels of psychological resilience. A possible explanation for this might be that when they received the teacher support, they tended to see their problems clearly and used their abilities and resources to maintain their mental health. These results were in line with those obtained by Kassis, Artz, Scambor, Scambor, & Moldenhauer (2013) who mentioned that the resilience levels can be changed by boosting positive relationships with family members, friends, and teachers and Frydenberg et al. (2004), who suggested that the teachers could play a vital role in enhancing their students’ resilience by participation in relevant programmes and activities. They also corroborated the ideas of and Yeung & Leadbeater (2010), who suggested that the adolescents who received higher levels of emotional support from their fathers and teachers, had lower levels of both emotional and behavioural problems. Likewise, they supported that teacher support was relevant to the subjective wellbeing of their students (Suldo et al., 2009) and university students tended to receive instrumental and appraisal support from their friends in classrooms and lecturers which was different from the support they had received from their flatmates (Wilcox et al., 2005). Furthermore, they seemed to be consistent with the idea that teacher support were vital for high school students who had to deal with negative situations (Possel et al., 2013) and Italian adolescents’ resilience and their perception about the future employment (Fabio & Kenny, 2015).

The findings of thesis confirmed Parichatikanond's (2010) study which identified that the Grade Piont Average X (GPAX) was not significantly associated with Resilience Quotient (RQ). However, these findings have been unable to demonstrate that religion had an effect on psychological resilience in British students compared to the previous research. For example, Haglund et al.'s (2007) study showed that people who were religious, spiritual or altruistic, tended to have more resilience when they had to deal with difficulties and people who sought for social support when they were stressed, tended to have more resilience than separated people. Similarly, Souri & Hasanirad (2011) suggested that individuals’ resilience was probably related to their cultures and religions and Hebbani & Srinivasan (2016) stressed the

126

importance of family, relatives, community and religious practices had on the levels of resilience in susceptible adolescents in India.

These results also showed that degree could not predict psychological resilience. They were contrary to previous studies which have suggested that Thai students who studied in Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, had higher level of resilience than students from other faculties (Parinyaphol & Chongruksa, 2008) and the Resilience Quotient (RQ) of students who studied in different educational programmes were not significantly different from one another (Parichatikanond, 2010).

Lastly, no evidence of the effects of both friends in and outside classrooms were detected in this thesis. These results were not congruent with the prior research which reported that emotional support from friends could help the first year student to deal with the difficulties and the university students tended to receive instrumental and appraisal support from their friends in classrooms and lecturers which was different from the support they had received from their flatmates (Wilcox et al., 2005).

7.10.3 The relationship between self-compassion and psychological resilience

It was found that self-compassion was not significantly associated with psychological resilience in British students because the p-value was higher than the significant level of .05 (p = .11). Specifically, those students with high levels of self- compassion, were not likely to obtain high scores in psychological resilience. The findings in this study did not match those observed in earlier studies which showed that self-compassion had been found to be related to resilience in many aspects

(Krieger et al., 2013) and compassion was crucial to comprehend psychological health

and resilience (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012).

7.11 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter has illustrated the quantitative data collection process in the UK. The three main findings were also discussed in this chapter. Firstly, it was found that year of study, a number of brothers and sisters and attitudes toward social media use could predict the levels of self-compassion in British students. Secondly, performance in comparison with friends and teacher support had the effects on the psychological resilience in British students. Finally, self-compassion was not significantly associated with psychological resilience in British students.

127

The next chapter, therefore, moves on to discuss the qualitative data collection in Thailand and the main themes to presented the strategies that Thai students applied to deal with difficulties in their lives.

128

CHAPTER 8: QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTION IN