The role of cognitive flexibility and spirituality in predicting the psychological resilience of university students

The primary purpose of the research is to examine the relationship between cognitive flexibility, spirituality, and resilience of university students. The study's approach is a descriptive relational screening model, one of the quantitative methods. This study first determined and then examined some demographic characteristics of university students, cognitive flexibility, spirituality, and resilience levels, and the relationships between these variables. The research was conducted with 449 people, 250 women and 199 men. The sample consists of undergraduate students studying at various faculties at Sakarya University. The participants were selected by a convenient sampling method voluntarily. The data were collected through The Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher to determine some demographic variables, The Cognitive Flexibility Scale, The Spiritual Orientation Scale, and The Brief Resilience Scale, which are valid and reliable scales to measure the quantitative variables. The collected data were analyzed with the help of the SPSS 25. Descriptive statistics, the Independent Sample T-Test, the One-Way ANOVA, the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, and the Multiple Linear Regression were used for data analysis. As a result of the research, while resilience did not differ according to whether the participants were male or female, cognitive flexibility and spirituality significantly differed according to gender. In the study, while there was a significant difference between students' "participation in social activities weekly" and "monthly income levels" and their resilience skills, no significant difference was found in "grade levels" and "perceived-parental attitude." However, the correlation analysis found significant positive correlations between the participants' cognitive flexibility, spirituality, and resilience scores. The multiple linear regression model established by considering resilience as the predicted variable was low-significant. While cognitive flexibility is the predictor variable that makes the model meaningful, spirituality is not a significant predictor in the model.