English abstract
The study aimed at identifying the level of optimism and pessimism among Students at Sultan Qaboos University, with regard to such Variables as academic achievement, sex, specialization, parental educational level and the economic level of the family. The study also aimed at finding the most predictable variables concerning optimism and pessimism.
For this purpose, 1055 Students from SQU were selected randomly. The Arabic optimism and pessimism checklist ( Abdulkhaliq 1996 )was applied which consists of 2 sub-subscales: optimism and pessimism both also with 15 items each Reliability and validity were obtained by using Alpha-Cronbach Reliability of optimism subscale was (0,90) while pessimism subscale was (0,91).
Results revealed a high level of optimism, and low level of pessimism. However, concerning the above research variables, no significant differences were found in academic achievement, but there were significant differences between males and females in optimism , favoring males, while there were no gender differences, in the pessimism.
Concerning student specialization, results the showed that science students were more optimistic, while Art students were more pessimistic. Furthermore, results did not show any differences as regards to educational level of parents, while there were differences in the economic level. The economically low level families of students were different from those high economically, in pessimism, while, there were no differences between the economic levels in optimism.
Finally the result revealed that the most predictable variables of optimism were sex, specialization and academic achievement consecutively, while specialization and educational level of mother were found to predict mostly pessimism. The results were discussed and interpreted in accordance to previous literature. A number of recommendations and suggestions were presented.
