The purpose of this study was to examine live stressor and coping method among college students in a bid to make educational intervention for them to lead a more successful, satisfactory college life. The subjects in this study were 371 students from ...
The purpose of this study was to examine live stressor and coping method among college students in a bid to make educational intervention for them to lead a more successful, satisfactory college life. The subjects in this study were 371 students from S university. To find out their life stressor and coping method, a survey was conducted.
The findings of this study were as below:
First, as a result of looking into how much they were generally stressed out in everyday life, it's found that the college students investigated were most stressed about their future, values and academic performance. The female students and sophomores were under a greater stress than the male students and the other graders. By type of college, those from the college of education were more strained than the others.
By gender, the female students were more stressed about relations with professors than their counterparts. The school year made a difference to their stress about the relationship with professors, as the seniors and juniors were more strained. Their stress about family relations and the future also differed with school year. The freshmen were much more strained because of family relations, and the juniors were under a heavier stress about their future. The academic perfor- mance stress also varied to some degree with school year. The freshmen and sophomores were more strained than the juniors and seniors. The type of college made a difference only to stress about the future. The students from the engineering college were most stressed about their future, and those from the colleges of humanities and social science were exposed to less stress.
Second, they coped with stress in their own ways. The most common coping method was wishful thinking, no matter whether they were male or female.
Their gender made no significant difference to coping method. By grade, the use of problem-centered coping and wishful thinking was significantly different according to school year. The seniors resorted to problem-centered coping method the most, and there appeared a wide gap in the use of this coping method between the sophomores and seniors, and between the juniors and seniors. The juniors counted on wishful thinking less than the other graders. The type of college they belonged to didn't make any significant difference to their coping method.
Third, regarding connections between stress level and coping method, the heavy-stressed group coped with stress in more ways than the light-stressed one. The former group relied significantly more on pursuing social support and emotional coping. Those who were more often exposed to stress used more coping methods.
Fourth, total stress wasn't significantly correlated to problem- centered coping, but it had significantly positive correlation to pursuing social support, wishful thinking and emotional coping.
The economic problems had significantly positive correlation to emotional coping, and the relationship with the opposite gender had significantly positive correlation to pursuing social support and emotional coping. The relationship with professors and family relations had significantly positive correlation to emotional coping. The future problems had significantly positive correlation to emotional coping, and the values problem had significantly positive correlation to pursuing social support, wishful thinking and emotional coping. The academic problem had significantly positive correlation to pursuing social support and emotional coping, and the relationship with friends had significantly positive correlation to emotional coping. Thus, emotional coping was significantly correlated to every factor.