Investigation of resilience of adolescents in terms of major life events, perceived social support and school engagement

This study examines the resilience of adolescents in terms of gender, important life events, perceived social support and school engagement. Within this context, resilience of adolescents is examined according to gender and grade level, gender and experiencing major life events, gender and mother-father education level. In addition, perceived family support, perceived friend support and perceived teacher support of adolescents are examined in terms of gender, grade level and whether the individual has experienced a major life event or not. Additionally, internal engagement towards school, school environment engagement and teacher engagement levels are examined according to gender and grade level. Finally, it is investigated whether resilience of adolescents is predicted by gender, experiencing major life events, perceived social support and school engagement. The sample of this study consists of 1022 students (533 girls, 489 boys) who are attending the high schools connected to the Ministry of National Education in the central city Afyonkarahisar. Participants are administered "Adolescent Resilience Scale", "Perceived Social Support Scale", "School Engagement Scale" and "Personal Information Form". Data analysis has been carried out by descriptive statistics, Two-Way ANOVA, Three-Way ANOVA, One-Way ANOVA, and independent sample t-test. Before applying statistical techniques, the assumptions of these techniques have been investigated. The data has been also analyzed by correlation and hierarchical regression. According to the results of this study, it has been determined that resilience level of girls is significantly higher than boys and also resilience levels of adolescents who have experienced major life events are lower than adolescents who have not experienced major life events. In addition, it has been found that resilience levels of adolescents do not significantly differ according to mother and father education level. It has also been found that the level of perceived family support of both girls and boys is lowest in 11th grade students and who have experienced a major life event. Besides, the level of perceived friend and teacher support of girls is lowest in 11th grade students and who have experienced a major life event. It has been seen that, girls' level of internal engagement towards school is significantly higher than boys. Additionally, according to the results, girls who are at 9th and 10th grade have significantly higher level of school environment engagement and teacher engagement than boys. Finally, according to the hierarchical regression analysis, perceived social support has been found as the most important predictor of adolescent resilience. According to the regression analysis results, 33 % of the total variance has been explained by perceived social support and 4% of the total variance has been explained by school engagement. On the other hand, gender and experiencing major life events have not been found to be significant predictors of adolescent resilience. Keywords: Adolescence, major life events, perceived social support, resilience, school engagemen