2021.01 60-1 A Study on the Attribution of Success or Failure toward Major Life Events among College Students in Taiwan

'Attribution of success or failure' refers to the personal understanding of causes of success or failure. For life education and school counseling, attribution of success or failure has important implications. Across the lifespan, an individual often experiences many successes and failures. When individual encountering the similar situations, behavioral tendency will depend on his attributional interpretation of prior success or failure experience. Attribution of success or failure is the phenomenal causality rather than the true cause. But the influence of the phenomenal causality is more important than the real cause. Therefore, if students can be guided to appropriate attribution of their own success or failure, it can help them form a positive outlook on life, which could be helpful in meaning of life education and counseling. Weiner's attribution theory of success or failure and research in this area have provided rich results since 1970's. However, the indigenous concepts of fate have not been incorporated in this theory context. It would be not enough to explain the experience of success or failure toward major life events. There are limited empirical studies that combine the theory of success and failure attribution with the traditional concept of destiny. If we can combine the two, we should have a more complete understanding of the psychological status of students, which will be more conducive to education and counseling. Based on this, the purposes of this study were to (a) develop a research scale for the attribution of success or failure of college students in Taiwan; and (b) understand the current situation of college students' attribution of the success or failure toward major life events. Based on the findings, the researcher discusses the implications of this study on school education and counseling. The present study included college students as participants. Through the discussion of the theory of attribution and the perspective of traditional destiny, the present study summarizes the basic structure of attribution toward major life events so as to develop an instrument of attribution of success or failure for Taiwanese college students. A total of 1222 undergraduates were recruited using stratified multistage sampling to investigate the attribution of success or failure. The results of the study show that the study summarizes the theory of attribution and the perspective of traditional destiny, and increases the orientation of "understandability" to develop the "Scale of Attribution of Success and Failure Toward Major Life Events of College Student ". The scale includes six subscales. Each subscale contains two dimensions of prosperity and adversity which has good reliability and validity. The attribution of the success or failure of undergraduates toward major life events are based primarily on the attribution of effort and ability factors. There is a significant interaction between the attribution of success or failure toward major life events and dimensions of prosperity and adversity, and the interaction between the six attribution factors and five life events is also significant. There is a significant relationship between religious factors and the attribution of success or failure of college students. Finally, the researcher discusses the implications of this study on school education and counseling: (1) In the process of education and counseling, it is the primary task to promote students' understanding of themselves in order to set reasonable goals for all major events in life; (2) To guide students to think about their own way of life when faced with the dilemma of doing their best but still failing; (3) In order to prevent students from forming a fatalistic outlook on life, students should be trained to do their best.

Keywords
Attribution of success or failure, life education, scale, school counseling, undergraduate

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