The Role of Social Emotional Health on Academic Achievement of College Students

Research on positive psychology has widely grown since its emergence. The strength of the human becomes a key point of positive psychology to explore, such as self-efficacy, optimism, self-control, etc. This research applied positive psychology to evaluate the role of social-emotional health on the academic achievement of college students. There were 107 first year psychology students of the Islamic University of Indonesia participating this study. Data were collected using the Social Emotional Health Survey System (SEHS-S) developed by Jones, You, and Furlong (2012) and Grade Point Average (GPA) of students. Data analysis showed that Social Emotional Health was correlated with GPA. Three domains within Social Emotional Health Survey System such as belief in self, emotional competence, and engaged living were positively correlated with GPA. However, belief in others does not correlate with GPA.


INTRODUCTION
Academic achievement is not a simple single concept about person learning capability. It has many factors influencing achievement. Traditionally, academic achievement linked with Intelligence test scores. As Neisser et al., (1996) reported, students' achievement correlates moderately with an IQ score (about. 50). But he also noted that academic success could not solely determine by Intelligence test scores, because it's only explain 25% of the overall variance. Similar to this, cognitive test like Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores and high school GPA reported mainly predict college grade point average (Schmitt et al., 2009;Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012) Not only cognitive factor, researchers also pay their attention to reveal non-cognitive role. Richardson, Abraham, and Bond (2012) highlighted the important role of non cognitive factors such as personality traits, motivational factors, self-regulatory learning strategies, students' approaches to learning, and psychosocial contextual influences. From 50 measures, performance self-efficacy showed the strongest correlate with academic achievement, higher than cognitive factors like school GPA and ACT.
Similar to this result, non intellectual factor such self-efficacy reported as a key factor to academic success (Robbins, Lauver, Huy Le, Davis, Langley, & Carlstrom, 2004;Sala & Redford, 2010;Aurah, 2013;Phan, 2014). Moreover, longitudinal study conducted by Duckworth and Seligman (2005) reveals that there is a non intellectual factor, self discipline, could predict academic achievement better than IQ.
Personality also shows has correlation with academic performance. Poropat (2009) meta-analysis of five-factor model of personality confirm that students with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness relate with their achievement. According to Hakimi, Hejazi, and Lavasani (2011) study, personality characteristics explained 48 percent of variance in academic achievement and conscientious type be the strongest predictor. Little different with that, Komarraju, Karau, Schmeck, and Avdic (2011) found the big five personality explained lower variance (14%) in grade point average (GPA).

Some
researchers view this contribution of cognitive and non cognitive factors interact each other on academic achievement Students have to manage their ability to learn; cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally.
It is why many researchers suggest student to regulate their own learning in achieving one goal, both in the context of students himself, social, and environment (Zimmerman, 1990;Kitsantas, Winsler, & Huie, 2008;Magno, 2011;Agustiani, Cahyadi, & Musa, 2016). The ability to control and maintain own will in attaining personal goal, upon personal resource mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally is called self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1990).
As the positive psychology rise, research based on psycho-social capital of human yield. Themes such positive emotion, positive character, and positive institutions flourishing its study. In other word, human strength and virtues become the heart of positive psychology (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Some positive psychologist defines it as optimal human functioning, focusing on positive aspects of our experience and functioning by considering its negative aspects (Linley, Joseph, Harrington, & Wood, 2006).
In the educational setting, positive psychology finds its relevancy in many ways. Finding from Pajares (2001) study indicates that achievement goals, expectancy beliefs, and value could be predictive of the positive psychology variables, especially by adding it with optimism.
Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich and Linkins (2009) reported that positive psychology program could improve learning and engagement in school.
The important things related to their research is resilience, positive emotion, engagement and meaning can be taught in school.
Positive psychology has broad and various constructs of social strength and psychological disposition. In the academic context, some positive psychological constructs co-occurrence. The relations among that positive traits then given name covitality (Jones, You, & Furlong, 2012). For further investigation on higher education version, Furlong, You, Shishim, and Dowdy (2016) has employed confirmatory factor analyses that resulting four latent traits: belief-in-self, beliefin-others, emotional competence, and engaged living. To address this issue, we conduct an investigation to evaluate the role of socialemotional health on the academic achievement of college students.

METHOD Participants
The participants were 107 first-year undergraduate psychology students of Universitas Islam Indonesia Yogyakarta. There are 25 males and 82 females, which has an age range from eighteen to twenty.

Instrument
Academic achievement was measured by using grade point average (GPA).
Social emotional health data were collected by using Social Emotional Healthy Survey System (SEHS-S) which developed by Jones, You, & Furlong, (2012). This self-report instrument consists of 12 subscales which associated with four positive social-emotional health domains. The first domain is beliefs or confidence in self. Second, a sense of core trust in others. Third, a sense of emotional competence and the fourth is feeling engaged in daily living.
All questions were responded to on a 6-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). In the current sample, Cronbach's α = .941. SEHS-S was translated into Indonesian language through forward and backward translation.

Procedures
The questionnaires were given to students enrolled psychology class. At the beginning of class, researcher introduced and asked the students for their cooperation and pay attention. Then the researcher explained the purpose of the study was to gather information on their learning attitude. Instruction was given before students fill out the questionnaires. They were told that there were no wrong or right answers. All of their answers would be confidential.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The results given in the Table 1 show that social emotional health correlates significantly with academic achievement (R2=.057, p<.05). Also, three domains of social emotional health such belief in self, emotional competence, and engaged in daily living correlate significantly with academic achievement (respectively R2=.054, p<.05; R2=.051, p<.05; R2=.065, p<.01).
The social emotional health explains 5,7% of the academic achievement variance, belief in self explains 5,4%, emotional competence explains 5,1% and engaged in daily living explains 6.5% of the academic achievement variance. Unfortunately, belief in others doesn't have any correlation with academic achievement. A stepwise multiple regression was applied to find which domain of social emotional health were significant in predicting students academic achievement.
The data analysis showed that social emotional health system (SEHS) could predict academic achievement (β = 0.240, F= 6,391; df=1; p<0.05). For all domains of social emotional health, the only domain which could predict academic achievement is engaged in daily living. It can explain 6.5 percent of the variance in GPA score and significant overall predictors (β = 0.254; F=7. 251; df=1; p<0.01). The main goal of this study is to explore the role of social emotional health on academic achievement among college students. The result shows that social emotional health correlates significantly with academic achievement. Also, social emotional domains such belief in self, emotional competence, and engaged in daily living relates significantly to academic achievement. Consistent with previous studies (Robbins, et al, 2004;Schmitt, et al, 2009;Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012), the results indicate that social emotional health has any influence on academic achievement. As Jones, You, and Furlong (2012) proposed, covitality is confirmed as a good refinement of various positive construct. It plays an interplay combination of belief in self, belief in others, emotional competence, and engaged living, which is directly related to college students adjusment and well-being.
According to Hattie meta-analysis (2009), student achievement affected not only by a single factor, but multiple. He grouping various variables which determine academic achievement into six factors: teacher, students, home, school, curricula, and also teaching approach. Within the student, various psycho social variables give medium effect size to academic achievement, both cognitive and non cognitive variables. Consistent with that data, the present study also highlights the role of non cognitive factor such belief in self, emotional competence, and engaged in daily living.
Achieving one's academic goals, needs trust in what we have to do. Trusting our self is prerequisite to act. Bandura (1995) describes our capability belief dealing any certain job or task as self-efficacy, which influence our affection, motivation, and behavior. A student who has good academic self-efficacy perceive himself could finish and manage academic task. As a consequence, he can achieve his academic goals. This self-efficacy, together with self awareness and persistence forming domain belief in self of social emotional health system (Jones, You, & Furlong, 2012).
In order to keep working and accomplish an assignment, students need to regulate their own will. Zimmerman (1990) has emphasized the important role of self regulation in learning to achieve one's goals. By maintaining our feeling, cognition, and behavior, we could achieve our goals. Magno (2011);Francesca, Nietfeld, and Li Cao (2016); Augustina, Cahyadi, and Musa, (2016) has shown the contribution of self regulation on academic achievement. With the capability to regulate academic behavior, students would get their best outcome. It is another domain of social emotional health, called emotional competence.
The other domain of social emotional health is engaged in daily living. The part of this domain is optimism. Academic optimism has reported have significant contribution to student achievement (Hoy,Tarter, & Hoy, 2006). As Forgeard and Seligman (2012) concludes, being optimism seem to get more beneficial in life, such happier, healthier, and more successful than pessimism. Optimism student would think and feel positive about what will happen in the future. This condition in turn would give effort to achieve academic goals.
Unfortunately, belief in others domain doesn't have any correlation with academic achievement (GPA). This domain consists of family support, peer support, and institutional support. Differ with previous studies (Hara & Burke, 1998;Fan & Chen, 2001), results show that social support doesn't correlate with academic achievement. Perhaps it reflects the autonomous stage of young adult, especially college student that dominantly doesn't live in the same house with their parents.

CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to find the correlation of social emotional health with academic achievement. The results supported the hypothesis that social emotional health is associated with GPA. Also, the three domains of social emotional health are associated, there are belief-in-self, emotional competence, and engaged in daily living. The only domain doesn't correlate is belief-in-others. The limitation of this research should be considered because it is correlation study and not causality, beside the samples is taken only from Univeristas Islam Indonesia students.