Self-esteem, locus of control and hopelessness as predictors of depression among university students in Malaysia

Cheang, Yen Thung and Chuah, Yue Xuan and Goh, Kelvin Wei Jin (2023) Self-esteem, locus of control and hopelessness as predictors of depression among university students in Malaysia. Final Year Project, UTAR.

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Abstract

About 30% of all university students in Malaysia suffer from different severity of depression. However, there have been a lack of studies on predictive factors that could lead to depression among university students. This current study aims to investigate the predictive effect of self-esteem, locus of control (internal and external), and hopelessness on depression among university students in Malaysia. A total of 123 participants’ data were collected to conduct this study, however after data cleaning only 95 responses were used in final data analyses. The criteria for participants of this study are i) Malaysian, ii) current university student and iii) currently residing in Malaysia. Out of the 95 respondents, 51.6% were males and 46.3% were females. Majority of the study participants were of Chinese ethnicity with 95.8%. Instruments that were implemented in the study were i) Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale, ii) adapted Levenson’s multidimensional locus of control scale , iii) Herth hope index and iv) patient health questionnaire-9. The final results showed that self-esteem was a significant negative predictor for depression and external locus of control was a significant positive predictor for depression. Internal locus of control and hopelessness were both non-significant predictors of depression. These results have contributed information on the predictive effects of self-esteem and external locus of control on depression. Proper intervention method could be designed and applied to decrease the risk of university students in developing depression.

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