Turner, M; Holdsworth, S; Scott-Young, C and Johnson, A (2017) Profiling resilience among construction management students: An international study. In: Chan, P W and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 33rd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2017, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK.
Abstract
Elevated levels of psychological distress are becoming more prevalent for students in higher education. Given this alarming trend, there has been a call to action. Resilience has been identified as a capability which can assist students to manage their stress and increase wellbeing. While some research has explored the resilience of students in higher education, relatively little is known about construction management students and their resilience profile. To address this gap, the Resilience at University scale was administered to construction management students in Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Two hundred and twenty nine students completed the survey. Principle components analysis identified five resilience factors: finding your calling/living authentically; managing stress; maintaining perspective, staying healthy; and building networks. Results indicated significant differences between countries on all resilience factors. Of the four countries, Hong Kong had the lowest score for all resilience factors. Capacity to maintain perspective was low for all students, irrespective of country. According to year of study, first year students had a lower capacity for finding their calling / living authentically than for other year levels. Final year students had a higher capacity to manage stress than commencing students. The results suggest that demographic characteristics and situational determinants may have a bigger impact on resilience than discipline of study. Findings offer important implications for the development of resilience among university students.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction management; students; resilience; well-being. |
| Index terms: | psychological distress, well-being, first-year student, determinant, university student, Hong Kong, United States, Singapore, becoming, Australia, survey, higher education |
| Subjects: | curriculum design, data collection methods, risk assessment, mental health and wellbeing, philosophical process, health conditions and diseases, educational institutions, Geography |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Health and Safety, Education |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here