The Influence of Social and Emotional Competencies on the Resilience of College Students: An Analysis Based on Research Conducted at a University in an Urban Area

Abstract

The challenges of university education include academic pressures, social integration, self-management, economic needs, and the pressure of competition and altered social situations. The conditions give rise to psychological needs for students to cope with problems and to adapt to everyday functioning. Social and emotional competencies are important individual resources as they require self-awareness, emotional regulation, social awareness, relationship management and responsible decision-making. The current study investigates the role of social and emotional competencies in fostering students' resilience at an urban university. The study is quantitative cross sectional research and the study subjects are 420 undergraduate and post graduate students who are empirically assessed using self-report structured questionnaires. Social and emotional competencies are translated into five dimensions: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. Students' resilience is evaluated with a 10-item scale that is based on the framework of the widely adopted Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale. Description of statistics, reliability coefficients, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression and group comparisons are reported in the illustrative analysis. The findings suggest positive associations among each of the five competency dimensions and resilience. Self-management and responsible decision-making skills were followed by self-awareness and social awareness skills, which were the strongest associations with resilience skills. In the multiple regression model, relationship skills and self-management were relatively good predictors, accounting for about 58% of the variance in resilience. The results suggest that the concepts of emotional understanding, emotional regulation, supportive relationships with others and constructive decision making under stress are related to resilience in university students. The research brings value to the field of higher education research by integrating social-emotional competencies and resilience in the context of an urban university and offers an empirical basis for the institutional interventions, curriculum development and student-support programmes