Research shows that high school and postsecondary education tend to be the most stressful and burdensome periods in lives of several teenagers and young adults. Some of the factors that negatively affect the quality of life of high school and college students include, but are not limited to: developmental changes, conflict within families, peer relationships, exposure to substances, uncertainty about the future and academic requirements. Nevertheless, research reports that some individuals cope with such stressors more effectively than others. This is due to a specific set of positive skills of psychological capital. Research even shows that these skills positively contribute to life satisfaction and mental health. In my Master's Thesis I focused on finding how psychological capital and the dimensions of psychological capital affect students' perception of stress. I also examined how psychological capital and the dimensions of psychological capital influence students' positive mental health. I was interested in learning if psychological capital and its dimensions are associated with experiencing stress and positive mental health, and if they also predict the above. There was a total of 515 high school and college students from all across Slovenia who participated in my research study. They were asked to provide a self-assessment on the Perceived Stress Scale, Positive Mental Health Scale and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire adapted for the population of high school and college students. The Psychological Capital Questionnaire and the Positive Mental Health Scale were translated, adapted and validated for Slovenian high school and college students. The collection of results took place over three weeks through various Facebook groups and personal addresses to schools and individuals. The results were collected and analyzed in SPSS and R Studio. Psychological capital has proven to be an important predictor of experiencing stress, with the dimension of hope largely predicting the experience of stress. Psychological capital has also proven to be an important predictor of positive mental health, with positive mental health being most predicted by the optimism dimension. Based on the results of research and past research, I conclude that psychological capital is an important factor in preventing negative outcomes and strengthening positive outcomes of mental health and quality of life in general. The authors state that psychological capital is an ability that can be strengthened, which makes it sensible to design workshops, prevention activities and targeted interventions.
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