Gratitude and resilience : a comparative study : Psychology and Education students

Abstract

This quantitative study looks at gratitude and resilience and explores whether there is a correlation between these two positive psychology variables in University of Malta students studying psychology and education courses. It also explores what differences are found in the levels of gratitude and resilience in students reading these different courses. The motivation for this study was the fact that having high levels of gratitude and resilience has several beneficial effects especially for caring careers. It is also known that both psychological constructs can be learnt. Data was collected through an online survey from participants (N=80) who gave information about their age, gender as well as the course that they are studying. This was followed by the administration of the GQ-6 (McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang, 2002) and the BRS tests (Smith et al.,2008), which are self-report measures for gratitude and resilience levels respectively. Data was then analysed statistically. Findings show that when taking account all of the participants, there is a statistically significant positive correlation (r=0.249) between gratitude and resilience and so as one construct increases so does the other. However, when analysing students studying specific courses, even when grouping students studying psychology courses or education courses, the positive correlations found are not statistically significant. Results also showed that the mean levels of gratitude and resilience do not differ significantly when comparing gender or course types. However, mean levels of both constructs differed based on age groups, where mean levels of gratitude and resilience increased as age increases. These findings can help to motivate further research on the best ways of how to design and include programs to develop gratitude and resilience in curricula. The findings of this study are similar to that of the literature reviewed, however it was clear that further research regarding this subject is required and would be beneficial.