Self-efficacy, self-concept, and social competence as resources supporting resilience and psychological well-being in young adults reared within the military community

Studies examining such concepts as self-efficacy, self-concept, and social competence have provided evidence for how individuals cope with stressful life events, thus maintaining adaptive functioning. Past research has hypothesized the military lifestyle, replete with frequent relocations and separations from a deployed parent, a rigid conforming community, and discrimination from those outside the military community, may be damaging to the psychological well-being of children. Resources such as self-efficacy, self-concept, and social competence have been shown in the research literature to be important in mitigating the negative impact of a stressful environment upon psychological well-being and may be important in the resilience of military children. Participants (N=720, ages 19-22) were recruited from the University of Utah and Hill Air Force Base and were classified into one of four groups: military reared college, military reared non-college, civilian reared college and civilian reared non-college. Participants were asked to complete four questionnaires to measure their current psychological well-being, self-efficacy, self-concept and social competence. Results indicated that significant differences in psychological well-being did not exist between military and civilian reared individuals when they were matched for education. For all four groups, only self-efficacy was found to be significantly associated with psychological well-being.