Psychological Resilience under Adversity in University Students: A Scoping Review of Emotion Regulation, Social Support and Adaptive Coping
Abstract
Psychological resilience among university students has been examined across diverse adversities, but the evidence directly linking resilience with emotion regulation, social support, and adaptive coping remains unclear. This scoping review mapped adversity-specific evidence and distinguished co-measurement from verified focal findings. Peer-reviewed English-language journal articles published from January 2010 through June 2026 were identified through PubMed/MEDLINE, OpenAlex, and ERIC. Eligible studies involved tertiary students, an identifiable adversity or sustained adaptation demand, a resilience construct, and at least one focal domain. Study design, context, measures, and evidence state were charted and synthesized descriptively without meta-analysis. Ninety-seven studies met the criteria, yielding 103 study–domain units: 22 emotion-regulation, 50 social-support, and 31 positive/adaptive-coping units. Cross-sectional or observational designs accounted for 85 studies (87.6%). Pandemic/lockdown and academic/clinical demands were the primary adversity in 41 (42.3%) and 28 (28.9%) studies, respectively. Only 21 units (20.4%) contained a source-verified direct focal result; 26 involved an analyzed pair without a recoverable pair-specific estimate or source location, 43 co-measured the constructs without a reported focal analysis, and 13 had unavailable results or sources. Verified findings varied by strategy, support measure, coping definition, and resilience operationalization, limiting cross-study comparison and causal interpretation. Twenty-six of 137 sought reports remained unretrieved. The breadth of construct coverage therefore exceeded the availability of interpretable direct evidence. Prospective studies with specified adversity and adaptation criteria, repeated outcome assessment, and transparent pair-specific reporting are needed to examine these relationships over time.