"To come away from home and get three points in the Championship is very rewarding for the effort and commitment the players have put in all season," said Adkins.
"We could have been 2-0 up in the first six minutes. Their goalkeeper made a great save with his feet.
"You have no divine right to get anything, but we work very hard for each other. We put on a cracking performance against Norwich, but the luck didn't go our way.
"We are going to make our own fortune and I'm delighted with it. I have kept the belief in the team and I have made sure that no-one is miserable about the run that we have been on."
United's young squad are in for a battle to survive in the Championship this season, but Adkins believes he has a group of players ready for the fight.
"We have a great group of players, the average age is 22 and we have to keep them as positive as possible," he added.
"We have to allow them to make mistakes. As long as they keep working as hard as they can, they can only get better and better.
"We have got a battle plan that we have set out for this season. We will keep the belief and the principles we have got. When you have got to battle it out, you have to just battle it out."
Lilywhites boss Alan Irvine admitted his side had been way below par in the opening 45 minutes, but felt they did enough after the break to have merited a point from the game."We were very poor in the first-half, but we were an awful lot better in the second half and could have got something out of the game had we been able to take our chances," he said.
"I told them before the match that you cannot approach any game without it being at full tilt. Sadly in the first-half we played very slowly, we moved the ball slowly and didn't have enough players prepared to make forward runs.
"All of that was something that we had to address. I felt Scunthorpe were the better team in the first-half but I thought we were the better team in the second-half. It was a good reaction to what we said at half-time, but unfortunately it didn't bear good fruit."