According to the American Association of health, cases of suicide among college students and teens doubled from the year 1950, and it's the current leading cause of death among college and university students. The young college students are away from home for the first time and make new friends. They are away from the support system of their parents and work under immense pressure from their colleagues. Several reasons have been associated with the cause of death among college students. Some include heartbreaks from their lovers, which is the leading cause, peer pressure, substance abuse, and even financial issues (Firestone, 2013). However, there is a need to understand whether their traits equally contribute to the death incidences. Different individuals have different personality traits that determine how they behave and the decisions they make in life (Crepeau, 2010). Therefore, the research will analyze the correlation between personality traits of college students with suicidal thoughts and intentions. Personal characteristics are a crucial contributor to suicide thoughts and intentions among college students despite having other significant contributors such as peer pressure from friends.
Literature Review
A research conducted by Arria, Vincent, and Caldeira stipulate that students get the idea of committing suicide from lack of social support and substance use such as alcohol. The research developed a multi-dimensional approach that was used to provide a basis of explanation on the ideation of suicide among college students (Arria et al. 2009). Of all the participants, there was a great indication of deregulations among the students that pushed them towards thinking of committing suicide. Such included things like father-son conflict. The method used in the research was a face-to-face interview with nearly 1,249 students. The same process will be used in the study where there will be questionnaires and interview questions that will establish how the personality of the students can lead to suicide.
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Personality traits that are inflexible play a vital role in the creation of maladaptive traits among university students who attempt to commit suicide through poisoning. The research tries to establish the link between the personal profiles of a student with an attempt to commit suicide through poisoning. From the study, it can be deduced that depression, anxiety, and personality disorder are some of the primary indicators of the likely hood that a college student will commit suicide (Devi and Prakash, 2015). Similarly, my research aims at establishing the correlation between the personality traits of a student and the likelihood to commit suicide. However, the difference will arise as the research will not only focus on death engaging through poisoning but in all aspects provided its end. The study is different from the one conducted by Arria and Caldeira. The difference arises as the research suggests that depression and anxiety are the critical indicators while Arria and Caldeira are of the conclusion that the absence of social support is the primary cause of suicide among students.
Majority of research has been focusing on examining the relationship between various psychological resources that may create a better understanding of the suicidal risk factors. Emotional intelligence has been known to be a decreasing factor of dangerous ideology among college students. However, there is a gap in the research when it comes to the sample size determination and the research design (Rey, Lopez and Extremera, 2018). To fill the hole, the study will include a test model mediator such as self- report of emotional intelligence and distress in psychology that is in association with the suicidal risk among college students. Form the research conducted earlier, and there was a positive indicator of self- report of emotional intelligence being a protective mechanism of suicide risk.
Nevertheless, the research had a limitation as it did not put into consideration the personal traits which can affect the suicide risk. Therefore, my research will be paying more focus on the contribution made by personality traits to suicidal actions among college students. The study is also different from the other two as it left out the aspect of an individual's, which is a potential cause of suicide.
Proposed Method
The previous research's focused on psychological resources and self-reports EI and established their relationship with suicide risk. Equally, they analyzed other factors such as maladaptive traits and only focused on poisoning and the suicidal method. Therefore, there is a gap in the research as they left out the aspect of an individual's trait which can equally contribute to suicide among college students. To fill the gap, my research will focus on analyzing the personal characteristics of a student and determine whether it correlates with suicide actions.
Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between personality traits and suicide thoughts and intentions among college students.
Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant difference between personality traits and suicide thought and intentions among college students.
Research Theory
Peer pressure is a significant challenge among college students as it affects their personality at large. Most students try their level best to fit in particular social class of his or her friends. Difficulties in meeting such standards can lead to depression and suicide in the long run (Beck and Alford, 2009). There is a positive relationship between the two. Therefore, the reasoning theory for the research is the increasing rate of social returns. An increase in the societal gap between the rich and the poor results in addition to suicide cases among college students.
Research Method
The method that will be used in the research surveys under the descriptive analysis. That will involve the use of questionnaires and interviews in the collection of data for further analysis (Farvareshi, Ahmadi, & Arfaie, et al., 2014).
Participants
The participants of the research will be 100 college students who are undergraduates. That will entail 45 female undergraduate students and 55 male undergraduate students. The age range of the participants will be between 18 years to 25 years. They will be selected from three different colleges to have a well-distributed sample size. The participant will be recruited voluntarily as no particulate trait such as race and religion will be put into consideration. They will be sensitized through ads in them, and the participants will be compensated.
Research Design
The independent variable in the research will be the presence and absence of suicidal thoughts among the participants based on three independent variables, which will be the personality traits. They include openness, extraversion, and neuroticism. The level of each will be as follows
| Level | Scale (%) |
| Low | 10-30 |
| Average | 31-50 |
| High | 50 and Above |
The three levels will be within the participants and will be assigned based on the response from the questionnaire and interview questions and not randomly. That will be a two time of comparison (presence of suicidal thoughts Vs. neuroticism) and presence Vs. Openness, extraversion, and neuroticism.
Procedure
The participants in the research will experience a sense of belonging through the interactive interview questions where they will have an opportunity to be outspoken. The setting of the experiment will be at the college student center, where the majority of the students spend most of their leisure time. There will be an ice-breaking activity to cheer up the participants. The event will include group formation of 10 individuals. Then each member will find out from his or her group members one exciting thing about them. One member of each group will be asked to read out loud the exciting things about his or her group members. The participants will complete the Adult Suicidal Ideation Questionnaires (ASIQ). Each of the participants will be given the questionnaires as a go and given 30 minutes to complete the questions asked. They will then proceed to a closed room where they will engage with the interviewer through some issues. Confidentiality of the information provided will be assured. An example of a question in the questionnaire will be "how do you handle your anger?" some of the instructions given to the participants will be
Answer all the questions asked.
When you are done kindly raise your hand and proceed to the waiting bay for an interactive interview session.
Don't hesitate to ask for assistance where you need necessary help.
Collected data will be analyzed statistically using SPSS (Statistical program for social sciences) through performing a multivariate correlation to obtain the level of significance and the p-test values. That will enable us to accept or reject the null hypothesis of the study.
Results
From the research, I am planning to obtain a high positive correlation between suicidal thoughts and ideas and neuroticism among the college students. Equally, I am expecting to get a moderate relationship between suicidal ideas and extraversion. More so, am hoping to obtain no significant relationship between openness and suicidal thoughts among the college students. For the levels of transparency, extraversion, and neuroticism, the expectation is to get a high level of neuroticism and a low level in both extraversion and openness among the college students.
Discussion
The proposed research can be evaluated based on the importance it will play in creating an understanding of the correlation between personality trait and suicidal thoughts among college students. The research will assess the relationship between committing suicide and the behavior of the individual. It is anticipated that the results of the study will indicate a highly positive correlation between suicidal thoughts and some of the personality traits of the individual, such as neuroticism. Also, it is expected that there will be a low correlation with the openness personality. Among the strengths of the study include the ability to measure and analyze more than a single physical trait with two dependent variables. Equally, there is the strength of working with a small sample size where all attributes are included for efficiency and effectiveness in the results obtained as well as accuracy and reduced errors. One limitation of the study is the inability to incorporate the key personal traits that are genetically acquired; instead, it only includes habits which are gained form influence or friends. Other than carrying out a descriptive analysis of the study, it can be carried out through the use of a linker scale. One future experiment that can be critical is to analyze the correlation between suicide thoughts and environmental factors. How the environment that one grows in can trigger suicidal thoughts and ideas. There is a need to reduce suicide acts as stated by the American Association of Health through understanding how personality trait can initiate suicidal thoughts among the vulnerable college students.
References
Arria, A., O'Grady, K., Caldeira, K. & Vincent, K. (2009). Suicide Ideation among College Students: A Multivariate Analysis. Archives of suicide research: journal of the International Academy for Suicide Research. Vol. 13, No 2. Pp. 30-46.
Beck, A., & Alford, B. (2009). Depression . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Crepeau, J. (2010). The Relationship between Stressful Life Events, Locus of Control, and Suicidal Ideation . [Place of publication not identified]: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse.
Devi, R. & Prakash, J. (2015). Personality Profile and Suicidal Behavior among College Students. International Journal of Recent Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 2, No 3. Pp 29-35.
Farvareshi, M., Ahmadi, A., Arfaie, A., et al. (2014). Relationship between Personality and Suicide Attempts via Medicine Poisoning among Hospitalized Patients: A Case- Control Study. International Scholarly Research Notices, Vol. 3 , No 12. Pp. 13-26.
Firestone, R. (2013). Suicide and the inner voice . Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Rey, L., Lopez, S. & Extremera, N. (2018). Understanding the Links Between Self-Report Emotional Intelligence and Suicide Risk: Does Psychological Distress Mediate This Relationship Across Time and Samples? Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00184/full
