Role of Resilience on Perceived Stress among Pre University and Under Graduate Students

In a day to day life we come across many hassles in our life and these hassles sometimes becomes stressors. Adolescent is a period of transitional stage with physical and psychological development wherein they face many such challenges and stressors. It depends on the individual ability, cognition and frame of life which help him to cope with stressors. Thus it is psychological resilience that is an individual’s ability to adapt to stress and hardship which determines his ability to cope with stress.

The aim of the present study was to examine the difference in perceived stress among Pre University and Under Graduate students, as well studying the relationship between perceived stress and resilience among Pre University and Under Graduate students. In order to examine the same within group and between group designs was adopted and null hypothesis was formulated. Sample size of 50 Pre university students and 50 Under Graduate students were administered with Resilience scale and Perceived Stress Scale. The data was statistically analyzed and results indicated Pre University students had high level of Perceive stress and low level of resilience and Under Graduate students had moderate level of Perceive stress and high level of resilience. ‘t’ score of (t= 4.63, p<0.01) indicated significant difference between Pre University students and Under Graduate students in perceived stress, and r score of (r = -0.70, p<0.05) indicated negative relationship between Perceive stress and resilience. These findings indicated that Perceived stress is high among Pre University students compared to Under Graduate students; as well there existed a high negative relationship between Perceive stress and resilience.

According to literature review it is found that resilience is related to positive emotions and these positive emotions during stressful experience have adaptive benefits in coping with stress (Tugad et al, 2004). Empirical evidence on resilient individual who have good coping strategies concretely elicit positive emotions, like humor, optimism, goal oriented behavior (Bergeman et al 2006)

Thus this result paves the way for academicians, policy makers and educational intuitions to provide resilience training program as a part of their curricular, so that young adults and adolescents will have better stress management abilities.