PREFERRED STRESS COPING STRATEGIES - A CASE STUDY ON CULS STUDENTS

This case study examines the issue of stress coping strategies used by university students with main focus on positive and negative strategies. Previous studies aimed at stress and how it was perceived by full time university students. These studies showed that students' lives were highly demanding and stressful. This current study focuses on a larger group of university students (N=177) consisting of full time and part-time students; SVF 78 questionnaire was used to obtain data on different stress coping strategies in order to compare students' results with those of a population sample. One sample t-test was carried out to assess the relation between these two variables, with special focus on positive-negative stress coping techniques' balance. Study results seem to indicate a tendency towards increased use of various stress coping strategies both positive as well as the negative ones. However, more detailed analysis proved that there is a certain imbalance in distribution of positive subcategories. In comparison to the population sample, significantly lower level of constructive strategies was found among the university students. Therefore, it seems highly sensible to offer CULS undergraduate students access to alternative strategies on coping with stress emerging from work, family, and school demands.