Psychology

The paper studied the level of stress and coping styles among male and female university students in Australia. DASS stress score and COPE score were used to evaluate the parameters by interviewing 384 students of ages 17-69. The survey was conducted using an online questionnaire and results show a slight difference between the level of stress and coping styles among the participants.

On a daily basis people are confronted by stressors and have stress reactions in varying degrees. When history is examined, it is to be found that the term stress was coined in the 1930s (Pin 2002, p. 214) and it wasnt until two physicians, Cannon and Selye began to publish the results of their research efforts that the nature of stress was understood. Over time, stress and its concepts have become an interest to many psychologists (Snooks 2009, p. 173).  Because of this, there is considerable information available on the topic. Due to this array of information on stress, there are many theories as to what stress is. Burton, Western and Kowalski (2006) refer to stress as a challenge to a persons capacity to adapt to inner and outer demands(p.570) whereas, Coon (1984,) refers to stress as a condition in which an organism is subject to extern conditions to which it must adjust or adapt (Coon 1984, p. G-14).

Stress is instigated by the environment, which generally results in emotional and physiological side effects. These effects are viewed as coping which are used by the individual. Coping, similar to stress, also has many different definitions. Lazarus  Folkman (1984) define coping as realistic and flexible thoughts and acts that solve problems and thereby reduce stress (Lazarus  Folkman 1984, p.118), whereas Burton et al (2006,) refer to coping as a reflection of the way people deal with stressful situations (Burton et al 2006, p 577). 

Stress and coping strategies share a reciprocal relationship one is often accompanied by the other. This can be seen in the relationship that exist between mood and symptoms levels which were found to be related to coping responses to various forms of stressors in the environment (Billings  Moos 1981, p139).

Just as there are different types of stress there are different types of coping mechanisms (Richard, Lazarus, Folkman 1984, p 141-143).  The two main strategies are emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping is when the victims efforts are to alter their thoughts and emotions surrounding the situation in which stress has been a consequence. The victim cannot physically change the situation themselves. For example, a distraught university student has failed their exam without grounds for a review. Due to this, the student needs to change their emotions and mindset.

The problem-focused strategy is defined as a form of coping in which the victim can change the situation, and they deal with the actual stressor(s) itself. An example of this is when a university student has an exam coming up and they still dont quite grasp the fundamental ideas that they will be tested on. Using the problem-focused strategy, the student will consult the tutors and set more time aside for study until they have a better comprehension. Those examples given above are also what is called positive coping.

Positive coping is where the victim of stress is not only dealing with the stressor but also gaining from the situation. However negative coping is when the victim chooses to lash out with non-constructive behavior, such as drinking or smoking, due to the strain and not dealing with the stressor at hand.

Gender differences may also play a part in coping styles. Burton, Western and Kowalski (2006, p 620) state that biology tends to be the most reasonable explanation as to why male and female reflect different choices when it comes to their coping mechanisms. Men tend to demonstrate their stress in more active ways than women do. Women tend to internalize things more than men. As a result of this, it is believed that women tend to have more periods of depression then men. However, men will act out more than women with bouts of aggression and are more likely to self-medicate with alcohol (Burton, Western and Kowalski 2006, p 620).

Although there are different outlets between men and women when it comes to their coping mechanisms, studies have shown that both men and women use emotion-focused and problem-focused copy strategies (Coon 1984, p. 358). Matud (2004) suggest that the womens coping style is more emotion-focused and less problem-centered than that of the men. He attributed these differences to the existence of low sense of control over their circumstances (Matud 2004, p. 1412). However Snooks (2009) findings show that women tend to have a problem-focused coping style rather than an emotion-focused type of coping mechanisms (Snooks 2009, p. 184). Snooks also stated that men are more likely to respond to stress in less healthier ways, exercise less and engage in risky behaviors. He also highlighted that men are also less likely to get medical help where as women tend to turn to others for support. (Snooks 2009, p 184). 

The purpose of this study is to investigate the levels of stress and the coping style used by undergraduate students in Australia. In particular, comparing the differences between male and female stress levels and coping strategies.  The hypothesis of this study is that female university students will tend to have higher levels of stress than their male cohorts. However, another prediction will be that the female university students will handle their stress better than their male cohorts whilst using the same coping mechanisms.

Methods
In a bid to evaluate the effects of stress on Australian University students and also identify the coping style used by those student 384 students between the ages of 17-69 were interviewed. The mean age of the participants was 32.22 years and out of the participants, 329 were females while 55 were males. This shows that 85.7 percent of the participants are females while 14.3 percent are males. The procedure for the analysis involves the use of online questionnaires that are made available to the participant via the universitys intranet using Opinio software. The questionaires contain all relevant demographic questions as regards to the aim of the study. The questionnaires were meant to be filled by the participant after he or she has read through it.

The measures made was done with the use of a stress subscale known Stress subscale of Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS). The scale was used to measure the participants perceived level of stress. The scale was design in such a way that it consists of 14 different items and each participant is asked to indicate the relevance of each statement to them over the past week. Each statement in the scale is scored between scale of 1-4 where 1 simply indicate the statement did not apply to the participants or 4 where it actually apply to him or her fully. COPE which is another scale was used as a subscale to measure the coping style of the participants is it positive or negative styles. The Score is also similar to that of DASS in terms of application to the participants.

DASS can be described as a set of scales that have been formulated to measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress(Psychology foundation of Australia, 2010). The scale was constructed to further boost the understanding of emotional states and for this scale to actually fit in well to any study it must meet the requirement of both the researchers and scientist-profession clinicians that are making use of it. The scale is made to contain 14 different items that have similar contents. For instance the scale of depression evaluates states such as hopelessness, dysphoria while the anxiety scale measures apprehension, trembling etc. This scale is usually administer to a large set of people or individually and have proved to be highly important especially in clinical settings.

COPE is another scale that was used in the study. The scale is usually used to analyze the coping mechanisms to various stressors. The scale helps the researcher analyses the way participants or subjects have been dealing with different forms of stress and this is usually done by analyzing what the subject does when he or she is stressed and how the individual has tried to adapt with the stressors. This is usually achieved in form of questions such as what extent the individual has been dealing with the stress and most likely expected question is in form of i havent been doing this at all or Ive been doing this a little bit.

Result
Analyses of the questionnaires show that the minimum DASS stress score was 14 while the maximum was 56 with a mean of 29.8. The overall statistics reveal a COPE scale with positive coping of maximum score of 67, minimum of 19 and the mean of 44.07 while the scale also shows a negative coping score 10 for minimum level and maximum score of 35 with a mean of 16.68.

Table 1
Overall Statistics
                                           Score range                                Minimum         Maximum                 Mean  Standard Deviation
DASS stress score        14                       56                         29.08                    8.81
Positive coping             19                       67                           44.07                   8.98
Negative coping           10                       35                            16.68                   4.57 

When the overall statistics is being broken down according to gender, DASS stress score shows a female score mean of 29.51 and male mean score of 26.47. COPE scales shows positive coping mean of 44.31 for females while male has mean of 42.60. The negative coping in COPE scale shows females to have a mean score of 16.66 and males to have a mean score of 16.75. The standard deviation for the overall DASS stress score was 8.81 while that of positive coping of COPE was found to be 8.98 and that of negative coping for DASS score is 4.57.

DASS stress scale has standard deviation of 8.95 for females and 7.46 for males. The standard deviation for the COPE scale with positive coping was found to be 7.82 among males and 9.15 among females while that of negative coping was found to be 4.63 among females and 4.27 among males.

Table 2
Statistics broken down by gender
                                              Gender                           Mean                standard deviationDASS stress score                 Female                         29.51                          8.95
                                              Male                             26.47                          7.46
Positive Coping                    Female                          44.31                          9.15
                                              Male                               42.60                          7.82 
Negative Coping                   Female                           16.66                          4.63
                                              Male                               16.75                         4.27

Discussion
Reviewed of literatures shows that gender plays an important role in stress level and coping. It was shown that there are different ways by which both gender demonstrate their stress i.e. men tend to demonstrate their stress in more active ways than women. Coping with different types of stress have been shown to be different from male to females. We can actually see this from the result of the study which shows a mean DASS stress score of 29.51 compare to male participants that have a less score of 26.47. The result of the DASS stress score actually supported the hypothesis of the study which states that women tend to experience more stressors compared to their male counterparts i.e. they tend to have higher level of stress than their male counterpart. Considering this difference in the score between both sexes purports the results of earlier conducted researches. However, the result cannot be said to be conclusive when we actually consider the number of participants in each category. This is because the number is small to be a true representative of the male students at the university. It can also be argued that the higher number of females participants would have contributed some form of bias to the study.

In COPE analysis of different coping styles used by the students, the results actually shows that female tend to have more positive coping mechanisms than their male counterpart indicating they are likely to handle stress better than their male cohorts using the same mechanism of coping. Although considering the number of participants, the number of male and female cohorts, it can be concluded that there are no appreciable differences between their handling of the same coping mechanisms. This is because a mean score of positive coping for female is 44.31 while that of males is 42.60. When we also consider the negative coping mechanisms among those participant interviewed we can also see that there is also no appreciable differences between the ways in which both sex handle stress situations or events. It can thus be concluded that this is against the hypothesis of the study which believes that female university students will handle their stress better than their male cohorts whilst using the same coping mechanisms. This might also be a result of limitation of the study simply because of the survey type used for the study which does not actually have a large number of participants that could have been a proper representative of the area of study.

This study actually shows that there is still a level of differences between male and female level of stress being experienced and how they tend to cope with the stress even when they are using the same coping mechanism. Further study using larger participant and evaluation of other factors that could affect individual response to stress should also be studied in the future.