Predictive roles of loneliness and automatic thoughts on resilience of university students

This study was conducted to investigate the predictive roles of loneliness and automatic thoughts on the resilience of university students with regards to the age variable, which is a demographic feature. This research is a predictive correlational study using the screening model for finding causes of events or phenomena. The sample of the study was composed of 516 undergraduate students (405 female, 111 male) in Yeditepe University. The research group included students from Science and Social Sciences areas. In the study; UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russel, Peplau and Ferguson, 1978; Demir, 1989), Psychological Hardiness Scale (PHS) (Terzi. 2013), Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) (Hollon and Kendall, 1980; Şahin and Şahin, 1992) and the Demographic Information Form prepared by the researcher were used. Independent samples t-test and one way analysis of variance were used to assess the differences among university students' loneliness, automatic thoughts and resilience levels in term of demographic variable: age. In the main analyses of the study, firstly Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the correlations among the study variables. Then, the multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the predictive roles of loneliness and automatic thoughts on resilience. According to the results of the correlational analysis; it has been identified that university students' loneliness, automatic thoughts and psychological resilience level do not differ according to age; and that there is a moderate negative correlation between loneliness and automatic thought levels; a low negative correlation between loneliness, and automatic thought levels and challenge, a sub-dimension of psychological resilience; a low negative correlation between loneliness, and automatic thought levels and control sub-dimension; and a moderate negative correlation between loneliness, and automatic thought levels and commitment sub-dimension. It was also found that loneliness and automatic thoughts negatively predict control sub-dimension at a low level, and commitment sub-dimension at a moderate level. Keywords: loneliness, automatic thoughts, resilience, university students