Abstract

Universities prepare students to become contributing members to the workplace and to society. However, with rising tuition costs and other increasing time and resource demands, students face substantial adversity. Students’ ability to cope with that adversity influences successful completion of academic coursework and retention in degree programs, ultimately providing a source of potential effective future employees. Previous research has demonstrated numerous direct relationships between dispositional resilience and pivotal outcomes, such as performance, life satisfaction, and subjective well-being. However, research has failed to explore underlying mechanisms through which resilience may affect these outcomes, especially in academic contexts. The purpose of the current study was to use self-regulation theory as a framework for examining the effects of students’ resilience on outcomes. Using a sample of undergraduate students from a Midwestern university in the U.S. (N = 141), we proposed and tested a path model addressing self-efficacy, self-set goals, and state anxiety as mechanisms through which resilience influences performance and subjective well-being. Our results provided evidence supporting a structural model involving resilience, such that student resilience (a) has an indirect effect on performance through self-efficacy and self-set goals, (b) has an indirect effect on state anxiety through self-efficacy, and (c) accounts for unique variance in subjective well-being after controlling for state anxiety. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

摘要

大学培养学生成为对工作场所和社会有贡献的成员。然而，随着学费的上涨以及其他时间和资源需求的增加，学生面临着巨大的逆境。学生应对逆境的能力会影响学术课程的成功完成和学位课程的保留，最终提供潜在有效的未来员工的来源。先前的研究已经证明了性格弹性与关键结果之间的许多直接关系，例如表现、生活满意度和主观幸福感。然而，研究未能探索复原力可能影响这些结果的潜在机制，尤其是在学术环境中。本研究的目的是使用自我调节理论作为框架来检查学生的复原力对结果的影响。使用来自美国中西部大学的本科生样本（N  = 141），我们提出并测试了一个路径模型，将自我效能、自我设定目标和状态焦虑作为弹性影响表现和主观幸福感的机制。我们的结果提供了支持涉及复原力的结构模型的证据，例如，学生复原力 (a) 通过自我效能感和自我设定的目标对表现产生间接影响，(b) 通过自我效能感对状态焦虑产生间接影响，以及(c) 解释了在控制状态焦虑后主观幸福感的独特差异。讨论了未来研究的意义、局限性和方向。