Patience And Its Implications For Contemporary Life: A Focus Group Exploration

After the reform and open-up,along with the development of market economy,the various evaluation mechanisms based on individual rationality and individual as a unit,the high level of competition under market economy coupled with the individualism culture creates great psychological pressure.All this is internalized in people’s psychology,resulting in less and less patience.The visualization of data saturation in domestic qualitative research is still in its infancy and needs to be further explored.This study collected data through focus group interviews.Twenty respondents were recruited who had a strong interest in the topic of patience and each brought their experiences and reflections on patience to the group interviews.They were between the ages of 18-30 and involved in various capacities such as college students,personnel management,and Internet operations specialist.Information was collected through a total of six rounds of interviews with the three focus groups,yielding approximately161,000 words of transcribed textual material.Two methods were used to test and present the information on data saturation,including the subject saturation test(subject saturation table,subject saturation line graph)and calculation of Jaccard coefficient.The transcribed materials were summarized step by step with the grounded theory.After three levels of coding,1982 original reference points,36 meaning units,and 18 focus codes were formed,and finally 3 research themes were summarized and named as "Essential Characteristics of Patience","Influencing Factors of Patience" and "Value of Patience".Conclusion:(1)Patience is both a psychological state and a psychological resource.Patience as a psychological state is characterized by both psychological processes and psychological characteristics of personality,with characteristics of emotionality,objectivity,continuity,and asynchrony,which are specifically expressed as stable emotions,willingness and ability to face different people or invest more time and energy in different activities,and a caring and warm attitude in the process of dealing with people.Patience,as a psychological resource,is limited and disposable.Individuals can better adapt to work and life in different situations by selectively disposing and using patience resources.Individuals may sometimes induce negative emotions and make corresponding external expressions due to a lack of patience.(2)Individuals’ physical and mental states,closeness to others,goals and expected valence,social role norms and pressure,and immediate feedback influence individual patience from different perspectives.Changing these factors helps to achieve patient interventions.(3)By investing more patience resources in different activities,people become adapted to the current needs of society,reap interpersonal emotional support,feel the meaning and value of life,and increase the happiness index.The self-regulation of patience also plays a protective role for emotions.Patience may also bring some side effects,such as wasting time and energy,causing delays,affecting efficiency and progress,and bringing more losses.This requires individuals to deal with patience more intelligently and allocate their patience resources more efficiently.Proactive regulation of patience also makes the individual more relaxed internally.There is a need to further emphasize and strengthen the education and development of patience in the educational process.This study further discusses the meaning of patience education and attempts to contribute ideas on how to carry out patience education.(4)In qualitative research,a combination of different methods can be used to present saturation information more comprehensively.In this study,two methods were used to present saturation information,the subject saturation test(subject saturation table,subject saturation line graph)and the calculation of Jaccard coefficient,which indicates saturation of the study material at different levels.This study followed the selection and research principles of qualitative research,selected the topic from social reality,made a more systematic study of the psychological phenomenon of patience,and draw some preliminary conclusions.The influencing factors provide ideas for patience intervention.In terms of research methodology,this study explores the problem of data saturation in qualitative research,and provides a reference for subsequent qualitative research to test and present data saturation information.