Correlates of Hope and Resilience Among out-of-School Youth from a Sample of South Korea

Background and Purpose:

Although the school dropout rate is not that high in South Korea, the number of school dropouts has been increasing since 2015. In 2019, the national status dropout rate was 0.9% and there were 52,539 out-of-school youth between the ages of 9 and 24(Korea Ministry of Education, 2019). Dropping out of school in adolescence impedes the acquisition of required knowledge and skills during a critical life period, which may lead to personal and social difficulties in later life. Given the negative impact of high school dropout on the developmental trajectories of adolescents, early identification of and social-psychological intervention with out-of-school youth at risk are essential. Both hope and resilience have important meanings for out-of-youth, having been found to have positive effects on their emerging adulthood. The study explored the meanings of hope and resilience among out-of-school youth and their predictors from a sample of South Korea.

Method:

Data were drawn from 687 out-of-school youth who are aged 11-22 years old in South Korea. In hierarchical regression models, both hope and resilience were regressed on three blocks of variables: (1) socio-demographic (age, gender, region, economic status, and years out of school); (2) psycho-affective factors (depression, self-esteem, and life satisfaction); and (3) social environment (social support and community safety).

Results:

Youth’s reported hope was negatively associated with depression (beta=-.092, p<.05). It was also positively associated with self-esteem (beta=.433, p<.01), life satisfaction (beta=-.308, p<.01) and social support (beta=.075, p<.05). In addition, youth’s reported resilience was negatively associated with economic status (beta=-.088, p<.05).It was also positively associated with self-esteem (beta=.375, p<.01), life satisfaction (beta=-.168, p<.01), social support (beta=.142, p<.01), and community safety (beta=.105, p<.01). In summary, youth who are more likely to be depressed were less likely to have high levels of hope. On the other hand, youth who have higher levels of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and social support were more likely to have high levels of hope. With regard to youth resilience, youth who were in low economic status were reported to have higher levels of resilience. Also, youth who have higher self-esteem, life satisfaction, social support, and community safety were reported to have higher resilience.

Conclusions and Implications:

This study explored the correlates of hope and resilience of out-of-school youth. Further, this study explored variation of these parameters by socio-demographic, psycho-affective factors, and social environment in a hierarchical way. This study shows that hope and resilience of out-of-school youth have a somewhat different implication for their practical interventions. Therefore, programmatic intervention for out-of-school youth at risk to promote their levels of hope and resilience need to be differently developed. Future studies should be implemented to verify the causal mechanism to increased level of hope and resilience among them using longitudinal data.