Relationship between Gratitude, Resilience and Well-Being among College Students

Abstract

College students are prone to more academic, career, and social pressures that could impact their well-being (Prasad, 2023). This study intends to examine the relationship between gratitude, resilience and well-being of male and female college students in Chennai through a mixed method research design. A total of 150 students were selected using convenient sampling, with mean age of 26.5 years. Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) (Smith et al., 2008) and General Well-being Measure (Verma & Verma, 1989) were the tools used to collect the data. A semi-structured interview was conducted to collect the qualitative data. The findings showed that males and females have exhibited moderate gratitude, medium low resilience and low well-being. Correlation analysis revealed no significant relationship between gratitude and resilience, and gratitude and well-being. However, resilience and well-being exhibited small but significant relationship. Additionally, the study also confirms that there is no significant gender difference between the variables. Four dimensions of gratitude were explored such as reasons for feeling grateful, gratitude practices, factors that influence the sense of gratitude and reasons for not expressing gratitude using qualitative analysis. The findings highlight the need for interventions to improve resilience and well-being for the sample studied. Further, qualitative analysis emphasize the need to customize gratitude interventions as it is found in the present study that social learning, religious teaching and personal factors play major role in gratitude formation among college students.