College Students on Their Stress and Coping: Complexities and Dynamics

Today’s college students are experiencing a considerable amount of stressors. Three studies ex-plored the reported stress and coping process in college students. Study 1 investigated the strength of sleep, well-being, and affect as predictors of stress. Studies 2 and 3 examined students’ general coping habits and perceptions of coping mechanisms, as well as their own coping process throughout three self-described stressful events. Study 1 results suggest affect as a strong predictor and sleep and well-being as weaker predictors of stress. Studies 2 and 3 results suggest similarities in students’ general exposure to stressors and coping habits but individual differences in students’ own coping processes and perceptions of coping mechanisms. Further, results suggest the dichot-omous nature of coping categorizations (i.e., problem vs emotion-focused, situational vs. disposi-tional) may be too simplified. Rather, coping is an idiosyncratic process with multiple layers. Theo-retical and practical implications are discussed along with limitations and future directions.