Assertiveness and humor styles as predictors of resilience in high school students

The main purpose of this study is to determine predictive roles of assertiveness and humor styles as predictors of resilience in high school students. The secondary purpose of this study is to examine the differences in resilience scores in terms of gender, school type and grade variables. The sample consisted of 570 (337 females, 233 males) high school students in 2016-2017 academic year, İzmir. While collecting data The Resilience and Youth Development Module, Voltan Acar Assertiveness Scale, Humor Styles Scale and Personal Information Form were used. Windows Excel 2007, SPSS 15.0 and SPSS 22.0, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, were used to analyze the data. Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test were used to examine the normality of data. Accordingly it was determined that the data doesn't show normal distribution. Test of Spearman Correlation, Stepwise Multiple Regression, Test of Mann Whitney U and Test of Kruskal Wallis were utilized in data analyzing. Results indicated that resilience was positively correlated with assertiveness. Also resilience was positively correlated with affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor styles; negatively correlated with agressive humor and self-defeating humor. On the other hand assertiveness, self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor were significant predictors which explained 10 % of the external factors for resilience; assertiveness, agressive humor and self-enhancing humor which explained 15 % of the internal factors for resilience; assertiveness, agressive humor and self-enhancing humor which explained 13 % of resilience. Nevertheless, gender, school type and grade variables were not significantly different with respect to resilience. These findings were discussed in the light of the findings of previous research in the literature.