Do Resilience and Stress Correlate in College Students?

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to determine what ways and to what extent resilience relates to stress levels in undergraduate college students. The study also aimed to investigate whether working while in school, relationship status, and minority status correlated with the resilience and stress levels of college students.

BACKGROUND: According to a study by de Vibe et al. (2015), stress had a strong positive correlation with neuroticism (r = .52, p < .01). Stress was also found to have negative correlations with several positive characteristics: well-being (r = –.53, p < .01), mindfulness (r = –.39, p < .01), and extroversion (r = –.15, p < .05). A study by Hasel, Besharat, Abdolhoseini, Nasab, and Niknam (2013) found lower stress was associated with increased hardiness and lower neuroticism. Finally, research by Mak, Ng, and Wong (2011) found resilience was associated with higher self-esteem (r = .51, p < .001), hope (r = .52, p < .001), and positivity (r = .38, p < .001).

DESIGN: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study intended to add to the existing research on the resilience and stress of college students. To be included in the study, participants had to be undergraduate students enrolled at a small Northeastern women’s university and be over age 18. Participants were recruited in the dining hall of the university over 2 days and were invited to participate in the study. Participants had to complete all surveys to be included in the study.

PARTICIPANTS: Surveys were completed by 43 undergraduate students at a small Northeastern women’s university. The sample consisted of 42 female students and one transgender student. Students ranged in age from 18 to 23, and 95% of the participants were full-time undergraduate students. Of the 43 participants, 29 students, or 67% of the sample, were working in addition to attending school. Approximately 45% of students reported being in a relationship, while the remaining 55% reported being single. Additionally, 35% of the participants reported perceiving themselves to be a racial minority, and 30% of the participants reported perceiving themselves to be a sexual minority.

METHOD: After institutional review board approval, the primary investigator obtained permission to administer the surveys to undergraduate students at the university cafeteria. Surveys were administered during dinner on Monday, March 28, 2016, and during brunch on Saturday, April 2, 2016. Participants were recruited and signed a consent form indicating they volunteered to participate in the survey. All participants who completed the surveys were offered candy as a token of appreciation for participating in the survey.

Participants completed a self-report questionnaire that included a short demographics questionnaire, the Undergraduate Stress Questionnaire (USQ; Fischer & Corcoran, 2007), and the Resiliency Scale (Siu, et al., 2009). The Undergraduate Stress Questionnaire is an 83-item checklist of stressful events in which participants check off all the stressful events that occurred within the past week (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007). The more items checked off, the higher the score, which indicates a higher stress level. The Resilience Scale includes nine items on a Likert scale, and participants indicate how accurate or inaccurate they found each statement. Higher scores indicate a higher level of resilience (Siu, et al., 2009).

Although 45 completed surveys were collected, two of the surveys were completed by graduate students and therefore had to be excluded from the data analysis. Resilience, stress, age, whether a student worked, relationship status, racial minority status, and sexual orientation status were entered into IBM SPSS Statistics as variables. Several questions from the demographic questionnaire had to be adjusted in order to enter the responses as numeric data into SPSS. The question asking how many hours the student worked each week had to be changed to whether the student worked or not. Similarly, the relationship status question was adjusted to indicate if a person was single or not instead of entering the relationship status of the participant. The data were then entered into SPSS and analyzed to determine if there were correlations between resilience and stress, as well as correlations with other variables.

RESULTS: This study sought to determine in what ways and to what extent resilience was related to stress in undergraduate college students. All four hypotheses were unsupported, since the relationships between all the variables investigated in this study were found to have weak correlations with insignificant p values.

Hypothesis 1 predicted resilience would negatively correlate with life event stress in college students. This hypothesis was unsupported, with an extremely weak positive correlation (r = .113, p = .471). Hypothesis 2 predicted students who perceived themselves to be a racial or sexual minority would have higher stress and resilience scores, and this hypothesis was also unsupported. Students who perceived themselves to be racial minorities had a very weak positive correlation with stress (r = .116, p = .458) and an extremely weak negative correlation with resilience (r = –.045, p = .772). Similarly, students who perceived themselves to be a sexual minority had very weak negative correlations with both stress (r = –.155, p = .319) and resilience (r = –.211, p = .173). Hypothesis 3 predicted working would positively correlate with both stress and resilience levels; however, working had weak negative correlations and insignificant p values with both resilience (r = –.064, p = .685) and stress (r = –.017, p = .914). Finally, Hypothesis 4 predicted being single would correlate with higher stress and lower resilience. This hypothesis was also unsupported due to weak negative correlations between being single and both stress (r = –.231, p = .141) and resilience (r = –.122, p = .441).

After data analysis, the principal investigator examined the individual responses on the Undergraduate Stress Questionnaire to see if there were any unanticipated findings worth noting (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007). Several stressors listed on the USQ were related to the topics that formed the basis for the hypotheses of this study. “Thoughts about the future” and “Lack of money” were the two most commonly selected stressors in the USQ checklist, with 83% of the participants selecting “Thoughts about the future” and 81% of the participants selecting “Lack of money.” Also pertaining to financial concerns, “Had to ask for money” was selected by 30% of the participants in this study as a stressor that occurred within the past week. Additionally, 46% of all participants selected “Working while in school” to be a stressor on the USQ checklist, which means 69% of the students who reported working while attending school perceived working to be a source of stress.

“Breaking up with boy/girl-friend,” “Found out boy/girl-friend cheated on you,” and “Fought with boy/girl-friend” were all stressors pertaining to relationships with significant others. All three stressors were checked off infrequently, with only 13% of participants breaking up with their significant other, 6% finding out their significant other had cheated, and 26% fighting with their boyfriend or girlfriend within the past week. Other stressors pertaining to social supports included “Having roommate conflicts,” which was selected by 40% of the participants, and “Arguments, conflict of values with friends,” which was selected by 42% of the participants. Additionally, “Bothered by having no social support of family” was selected by 23% of the participants, and “Felt isolated” was selected by 28% of the participants. These findings suggest that social supports unrelated to significant others, such as roommates, friends, and family, may be considered to be more stressful than significant others.

CONCLUSION: The present study attempted to understand in what ways and to what extent resilience was related to stress levels in college students. Four hypotheses were developed based on the findings of previous studies. Resilience was expected to correlate with stress, and working, minority status, and relationship status were all expected to impact stress and resilience levels. Despite prior research in support of these hypotheses, all correlations between these variables were weak and insignificant. The lack of support for these hypotheses was inconsistent with previous research and indicates possible limitations of the study. While no significant results were found in this study, further research is still needed to examine how factors such as relationship status, minority status, and working while attending school impact resilience and stress levels in college students.

IMPACT STATEMENT: Investigating the role of resilience and stress in other variables will help occupational therapists motivate clients to overcome the obstacles that prevent them from achieving their treatment goals. In the existing research, resilience has been demonstrated to correlate with positive personality characteristics, and to negatively correlate with poor mental health and stress. Understanding these relationships will help occupational therapists assist their clients in overcoming adversity.

Contrary to the existing body of literature, this study did not find significant relationships between resilience, stress, and other variables in college students. Therefore, further research is needed to examine the hypotheses posed in the present study. Future studies could examine whether the number of hours worked and the type of job worked impact the stress and resilience levels of working college students. More research could also examine whether minority status due to race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation impacts the stress and resilience of college students, and if these results differ from perceived minority status. Finally, future studies could explore whether different types of relationships or social supports have different effects on college students’ stress or resilience levels.

RESEARCH PRIORITIES: Resilience is a complex characteristic, and it is closely tied to the successfulness of people who are overcoming adversity. Every person has struggled with something at some point in time. Researching resilience is a priority because it helps occupational therapists understand what characteristics help people become successful despite the odds. Resilience in the face of adversity is a motivating topic and is relevant to all of us both in our professional and our personal lives. Investigating the variables that are associated with resilience will help occupational therapists better understand how to help their clients overcome similar obstacles that negatively impact their treatment goals.

References

de Vibe, M., Solhaug, I., Tyssen, R., Friborg, O., Rosenvinge, J. H., Sørlie, T., . . . Bjørndal, A. (2015). Does personality moderate the effects of mindfulness training for medical and psychology students? Mindfulness, 6, 281–289. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-013-0258-y

Fischer, J., & Corcoran, K. (2007). Measures for clinical practice and research: A sourcebook. Vol. 2. Adults. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hasel, K. M., Besharat, M. A., Abdolhoseini, A., Nasab, S. A., & Niknam, S. (2013). Relationships of personality factors to perceived stress, depression, and oral lichen planus severity. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 20, 286–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-012-9226-5

Mak, W. W., Ng, I. S., & Wong, C. C. (2011). Resilience: Enhancing well-being through the positive cognitive triad. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58, 610–617. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025195

Siu, O.-L., Hui, C. H., Phillips, D. R., Lin, L., Wong, T.-W., & Shi, K. (2009). Resiliency Scale [Database record]. Washington, DC: PsycTESTS. https://doi.org/10.1037/t09897-000