ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF OUTDOOR RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES ON DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL RESILIENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: AN EMPIRICAL CASE STUDY AT UITM PUNCAK ALAM, MALAYSIA

Resilience is majorly determinant in well-being, especially in dealing with academic and personal pressures among students. This paper was an attempt to evaluate the influence of outdoor recreative activities on the acquisition of mental resilience of university students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Puncak Alam, Malaysia. The quantitative cross-sectional design was embraced, and 377 students took part in the study. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10) was used as well as the Outdoor Recreation Self-Efficacy (ORSE) Scale which were all seen to be validated. Descriptive analysis revealed that the dominant activities that the students were involved with were hiking (52.5), kayaking (37.4) and abseiling (28.9). Pearson quantitative correlation was used to show that there is a moderate, positive association between the participation in outdoor recreation and mental resilience, with the variable r = .46, and p < .001. The Multiple regression analysis revealed that participation in outdoor recreation was a significant predictor of mental resilience, 5 =.42, p <.001 and it explained 21.3 of variance in resilience scores. These results insinuate that time spent outdoors is important to the psychological strength and the stress coping abilities of students. The research advises universities to incorporate outdoor recreation in their student development course to engage in a strategic intention that would help students improve on their mental health and resilience. Future Longitudinal research is also recommended to test the long-term outcomes of such interventions.