The Impact of Work-Family Conflict on Parenting Style and Life Satisfaction

Abstract

The present investigation examines the association between optimism and mental health in college students, and whether this relation is stronger for one sex over the other. The participants were 200 college students (100 males and 100 females) who completed standard instruments of optimism and mental health on a 5-point Likert format. The descriptive statistics also showed that the female students obtained higher mean scores on optimism and mental health in comparison with the male students. Results Correlation analyses indicated that for boys and girls, there was a significant strong positive relationship between optimism and mental health (respectively (r = 0.72 for boys, r = 0.78 for girls p < 0.001), p < 0.001) that supported the first hypothesis in this study. However, the independent samples t-test showed that the difference in optimism between males and females approached statistical significance (p = 0.053), thus providing partial support for the second hypothesis. These results confirm the status of optimism as a protective psychological factor in the mental health of students, with the suggestion that gender is a weak if not insignificant contributor to optimism dispositions. Findings highlight the necessity of providing whole-of-population resilience- and positive-thinking interventions to be included within university settings.