Tackling immense workload, gaining new social networks and dealing with financial pressure are only a few of the demands that college students have to meet when entering higher education systems. College support programs try to assist students during the transition. Unfortunately, not all students appear to benefit from the existing programs. As the report by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2011 showed for the U.S., only 56 percent of college students complete four-year degrees within six years. "There is a need to identify personal and contextual protective resources for predicting adjustment, promoting success and enhancing development of students emotional inoculation to demands and challenges, Feldman states. "The salutogenic paradigm may clarify and support the planning of prevention and intervention strategies in college systems.
Feldman and colleagues (2012) propose that it is the difference in Sense of Coherence, Self-efficacy and Hope that decide whether a person perceives college demands as threats, and thus experiences a huge amount of stress, or if these circumstances are interpreted as challenges that can actually be met and successfully overcome. "Our intervention was designed to exemplify and combine all three of these constructs, Feldman states. "Theoretically, these three construct complement one another well.
Sense of Coherence (SOC) describes a persons tendency to perceive their environments as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful, and thus provides a measure of the individuals general coping abilities in the face of challenges.
Hope, in the context of goal pursuit, can be understood as a persons belief in their ability to achieve desired goals. It describes a positive motivational state in which a person has a sense of successful agency thinking (e.g. "I can do this) and pathways thinking (feasible plans to achieve a certain goal, e.g. "First I need to do
).
Self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) is defined as a persons beliefs in his or her general ability to organize and execute courses of action to attain designated Goals.
While SOC is considered to be the most stable trait of the three constructs, Hope and Self-efficacy are mostly learned skills. They should be more easily targeted by psychological interventions.
The Hope Workshop
The Hope Workshop, as designed by Feldman and his colleagues, consists of a 90 min-session facilitated by two leaders. In an informal lecture style students are informed about the significance of developing personal goals and hopes for the future. They are guided through a cognitive exercise (goal mapping) to derive an academic goal they wish to achieve, as well as specifying steps to achieving their goal and identifying possible obstacles. During a mental rehearsal exercise students vividly imagine themselves engaging in activities to approach their goal. Visualization and motoric exercises are included to enhance positive affect and better learning; while short verbal persuasions of a students successful participation in the program are provided by the leaders to enhance self-efficacy.
Feldman and colleagues put the Hope Workshop to test and assessed 43 first-year student participants SOC, Self-efficacy and Hope at three points in time, as well as students grades 6 months prior to the workshop, 1 week prior to the workshop and two months following the workshop.
The results are encouraging: Although Sense of coherence displayed some stability over time (as was expected from theory), Self-efficacy and Hope could successfully be targeted by the intervention. Maybe even more noteworthy: Students who achieved high Hope levels following the workshop, achieved significantly higher grades during the next semester; despite the fact that these groups did not differ in grades before the intervention.
"This short workshop helped me to learn more about myself, and how I can advance in reaching my goals, one student commented on her personal experience with the Hope workshop. Most participants said that the workshop had made them more focused in their work and that they felt like the College really cared about them.
Exploring Mental Health: Theoretical and Empirical Discourses on Salutogenesis
Mayer, Claude-Hélène; Krause, Christina (Eds.)
