Analysis of the Relationship between the Resiliency Level and Problem Solving Skills of University Students

Abstract

Higher education is becoming increasingly student-oriented. Therefore, the examination of students’ personal and social qualities from different perspectives has become highly critical for educational researchers. Among those qualities that receive special attention by the educational researchers is resiliency. Resiliency can be described as the ‘self-corrective tendency’ that motivates people to develop as normal adults even in the most difficult situations, while resilient can be defined as a person who is resistant and flexible and also has the ability to heal quickly, get better, overcome challenges of all kinds of trauma, tragedy, personal crises, and problems (Bezmez, Blakney, Brown, 1999 cited in Gürgan, 2006). Resiliency is a particularly important quality for educational researchers as it strongly affects the students’ ability to bounce back stronger and wiser from any difficulties, and the social-cognitive development process of the individuals. On the other hand, problem solving ability is considered as another critical quality that the students must gain as it facilitates the process of problem definition, information- gathering regarding the problem, determination of any obstacles that can prevent the problem-solution, and the motivation towards problem-solving behavior (Davidson, Deuser ve Sternberg, 1994 cited in Sardoğan, Karahan, Kaygusuz, 2006). Undoubtedly, problem solving behavior is closely related with personal characteristics. People who possess good problem solving skills can have better lives than others as they are more successful in figuring out the best possible solutions and know how to behave in problematic situations. The purpose of this research is to investigate the resiliency level of university students by various variables and the relationship between their resiliency level and problem-solving abilities. A survey study method was employed in this research. Data was gathered from 325 students who studies at Yeditepe University in Istanbul during fall, 2012. The survey was composed of three different sections. First section is developed by the researchers to obtain the demographic information of the participants. Second section is composed of a Resilience scale which was developed by Gurgan (2006), while the third and the last section was composed of a Problem Solving Inventory which was developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and adapted into Turkish by Sahin, Sahin ve Heppner (1993). Both scales have high reliabilities with a Cronbach Alpha .80 and .88 respectively. Any increase in the resiliency mean score obtained from the scale can be interpreted as an increase in the resiliency level of the university students. The minimum score that can be obtained from the resiliency scale is determined as 50 while the maximum score is 250. On the other hand, the high scores obtained from the problem solving inventory indicates that the person has a negative perception about his/her problem solving skills, and perceives those skills as unsatisfactory. The score that can be obtained from the problem solving inventory ranges between 32 and 192. Research findings reveal that university students have high resiliency level with a sample mean of 190.07. Furthermore, no significant difference has been found in the resiliency level of university students in terms of gender, grade level, monthly income, and accommodation facilities (p > 0.05). However, a significant difference has been found in their resiliency level in terms of faculty, work experience, academic achievement, self-perceived future job achievement, father's education level, parenting style and their description of selves (p<0.05). Sample mean of problem-solving ability has been found as 92.82. The total score that can be obtained from Problem Solving Inventory ranges between 32 and 192. The low scores indicated that the person had effective and successful set of behaviors related to problem-solving, while the higher scores indicated that the person felt inadequate and poor in terms of problem-solving skills. Therefore, the mean score of 92.82 for problem-solving skills indicates that Yeditepe university students’ problem-solving skills are at the middle level. On the other hand, the Pearson correlation coefficient of -0.672 (p<0.05) which was calculated for the relationship between resiliency and problem-solving skills of students indicated a positive and somewhat strong relationship between the resiliency level of university students and their problem-solving skills.