Abstract
While in the past the concept of resilience was used to explain psychological well-being in extreme situations like enduring poverty, abuse, or war, it has now found broad application in numerous fields of research. It can also be applied to examine how everyday challenges and problems are dealt with, for example in the educational and university context. This raises the question of whether resilience and academic success are correlated. Using German longitudinal data including university and university of applied sciences students in their first four years (2010–2015) we investigate how resilience and various measurements of success (satisfaction, intention to drop out, grades) are correlated using multilevel growth-curve models. We demonstrate that resilient individuals have consistently more positive academic trajectories, have lower dropout intentions, report better grades and are more satisfied with their lives. The effects are exceptionally stable over time, statistically highly significant and of considerable magnitude. This demonstrates that resilience is associated with better outcomes in university students under control of a large number of potential confounding factors and influences.
Highlights
While in the past the concept of resilience was used primarily to explain psychological resilience in disasters and in emergency situations, for example in war or extreme poverty (Luthar 1999), it is utilized to explain how to deal with everyday psycho-social conflicts and problems
Setbacks and problems are practically unavoidable, so that dealing constructively with these challenges is more important than avoiding them. This raises the question of what role resilience plays in the university context and whether students benefit from resilience in terms of academic success
Is it demonstrable that students with more pronounced resilience are better able to deal with negative events and are less affected by them? Do such students report more positive and more successful trajectories? On the one hand, clarification of these questions seems relevant to demonstrate that resilience is a significant concept with practical implications in extreme situations and in everyday life
Summary
While in the past the concept of resilience was used primarily to explain psychological resilience in disasters and in emergency situations, for example in war or extreme poverty (Luthar 1999), it is utilized to explain how to deal with everyday psycho-social conflicts and problems. Setbacks and problems are practically unavoidable, so that dealing constructively with these challenges is more important than avoiding them. This raises the question of what role resilience plays in the university context and whether students benefit from resilience in terms of academic success. Is it demonstrable that students with more pronounced resilience are better able to deal with negative events and are less affected by them? In this case it would be useful to further investigate when and how resilience is developed and whether it can be learned and trained in order to have a protective factor against negative life events
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