| Summary: | University students are members of the youth
community who have enormous potential to
contribute towards the development of the
country. The health and wellbeing of students
are reflected in their low social anxiety and
perfectionism. Family SES factors such as
income also affect social fears and aviodance
and influence the adaptive and maladaptive
perfectionism among university students. This
study, conducted using the survey method was
performed on 1618 university students aged
18 – 25 year across Malaysia selected via a
multistage stratified sampling as respondents.
A self administered questionaire containing
demographic information and the Almost
Perfect Scale- Revised (Slaney, Rice, Mobley,
Trippi, & Ashby, 2001), and Liebowitz Social
Anxiety Scale (Heimberg et al.,1999), to
tap on perfectionism, and social anxiety
was used for data collection. Results of this
study found that slightly more than half of the
respondents scored higher than the mid-point
of perfectionism standard, indicating high level
of perfectionism standard (M = 36.55, SD =
6.31). However, slightly more than half of the
respondents scored lower than the mid-point of
the remaining study variables, suggesting low
levels of perfectionism discrepancy (M = 56.36,
SD = 10.81), fear social anxiety (M = 28.36,
SD = 12.70), and avoidance social anxiety (M
= 26.00, SD = 12.36). As for social anxiety,
majority have moderate fear and avoidance
while 5.6% have severe fear and 3.8% reported
severe avoidance social anxiety. The results
show that majority of students in Institutions
of Higher Learning (IHL) have positive social
outlook and low maladaptive perfectionism
personalities even though the family SES is at
a moderate level. The implications of the study
findings on family roles are also discussed in
this article.
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