The purpose of this study was to examine the self-esteem of university students, social support given to them from significant others, their stress coping, and the relationship of these factors to dealing with pressing tasks.
The subjects in this stu...
The purpose of this study was to examine the self-esteem of university students, social support given to them from significant others, their stress coping, and the relationship of these factors to dealing with pressing tasks.
The subjects in this study were 301 selected students who attended this university in Kyungsan, including 105 males and 196 females. Tree kind of tests were used in this study; Self-Esteem Inventory (Coopersmith, 1967), Interpersonal Support Evaluation List : ISEL( Cohen & Hoberman, 1983), The Way of Stress Coping Checklist( Forkman & Lazarus).
A survey was conducted, and the collected data were analyzed with spss/pc program.
The brief findings of this study were as below:
First, concerning whether gender made any significant difference to self-esteem, social support and stress-coping style, the male and female university students weren't significantly different from each other in self- esteem.
Second, regarding whether major area made any significant difference to self-esteem, social support and stress-coping style, there appeared no significant gap. This indicated that the major area of the university students had nothing to do with their self-esteem, social support and stress-coping style.
Third, those who had better self-esteem took more active action to handle stress, and the others who had less self-esteem coped with it in more passive manner.
Fourth, the passive stress-coping scores didn't significantly differ between the group with higher social support and the other with lower social support. However, the group that perceived themselves to be given more social support was significantly different in active coping from the other group that didn't.
Finally, there was significantly positive correlation between self-esteem and social support. This implied that they were closely related to each other.
There are some suggestions based on the above-mentioned findings:
First, the questionnaire of self-administration type was employed in this study, and there is a need to find more effective method.
And the subjects in this study were confined to the students in Kyungsan area university, but as social support might be under the influence of social class and geographic region, it's advisable for future research efforts to focus on the gap between the classes with different sociocultural background.