Linguistics

Mathematics education

Philosophy

Neuroscience

Stress (linguistics)

Stress management

Social psychology

Cognition

Operating system

Psychiatry

Developmental psychology

Computer science

Anxiety

Time management

Norwegian

Psychology

Applied psychology

Academic achievement

Coping (psychology)

Clinical psychology

Stressor

Journal of behavioural sciences

Students in higher education perceive academic life as stressful and demanding (Wan, 1992; Hammer, Grigsby, & Woods, 1998) and report experiencing emotional and cognitive reactions to this stress, especially due to external pressures and self-imposed expectations (Misra, & McKean, 2000). They report numerous stressors during term-time, including academic demands and social adjustment.Bean and Hammer (2006) conducted a study to examine students' perceived level of stress in relation to their academic workload. 55% students reported that they have to ignore one subject for the preparation of the other subject. 42.5% students reported moderate level of stress whereas in 27% stress level was beyond manageable level. Stress-inducing academic demands include grade competition; lack of time and issues relating to time or task management (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, & Phillips, 1990; Trueman., & Hartley, 1996); they need to adapt to new learning environments (Van-Rooijens, 1986) in terms of the increased complexity of the material to be learned and the greater time and effort required to do so; and the need to constantly self-regulate and to develop better thinking skills, including learning to use specific learning techniques (F ram, & Bonvillian, 2001).Emotional stress, such as anxiety, students' appraisal of the stressfulness of the role demands and their ability to cope with those demands are also connected to academic stress (Wan, 1992; Talaei, Ardani, & Saghebi, 2008). Ross, Niebling, and Heckert (1999) carried out research to determine the major sources of stress among college students using student Stress Survey consisting of 40 stressful situations. The top five sources of stress reported by students included: change in sleeping habits; vacations/breaks; change in eating habits; increased work load and new responsibilities. In another study, Schneider (2002) suggested that students perceived workload required in college, competition among students and difficulty of the curriculum very stressful. Among top sources of stress for engineering students included: heavy workload in Engineering courses; high level and difficult nature of Engineering curriculum; large amounts of time required to complete assignments; lack of sleep; and competition with classmates for grades and inflexibility of engineering curriculum. Similar results were reported by a research conducted by Polychronopoulou, and Divaris (2009) on students in dental education. Assigned workload, performance pressure, and self-efficacy beliefs constituted the most stress-provoking factors.Another category that evokes stress is social adjustment, particularly adjusting to university life (Saracoglu, Minden, & Wilchesky, 1989; Abouserie, 1994; Johnson, Batia, & Hauan, 2008) and separating from family and friends. Finally, other constraints include financial pressure (Miech, & Shanahan, 2000) and other technical difficulties. Thus, academic stressors cover the whole area of learning and achieving in and adjusting to a new environment in which a great deal of content must be assimilated in a seemingly inadequate period of time. Since students endeavor to adapt themselves to academic life, positive adaptation and well-being factors are associated with fewer experienced stress symptoms (Van-Rooijen, 1986; Tobin, & Carson, 1994; Andrews, Hejdenberg, & Wilding, 2006).Coping StrategiesCoping strategies are assumed to have two primary functions: managing the problem causing stress and governing emotions relating to those stressors (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980, 1986; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, Lazarus, 1990). Interpreting their results in terms of this assumption, most studies confirm two major related findings. The first is that a situation is evaluated as stressful, in part, whenever the individual perceives a lower ability to cope with it. The second finding is that stressors perceived as controllable elicit more proactive coping mechanisms (Karasek, & Theorell, 1990) while those perceived as uncontrollable elicit more avoidance strategies (Anshel & Kaissidis, 1997; Compas, Malcarne, & Fondacaro. …

Perceived Stress, Academic Workloads and Use of Coping Strategies by University Students