Personality Traits, Academic Stress and Adjustment Styles among Nursing Students

Abstract

Nursing students face extremely high level of stress in their beginning years. Certain personality traits make the students more vulnerable for using adjustment styles and handle the stress in subsequent years of study. The aim of this study was to see the relationship of academic stress with personality traits and adopted adjustment styles among nursing students. In this study conducted on 114 randomly selected nursing students, a socio-demographic data sheet, a short form revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-A Hindi edition (EPQRS-H), Academic Stress Scale and a brief COPE were administered. The data was analysed by using chi-square test, one way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation. Students reported more use of active and healthy coping styles and more environmental stressors. Academic stress shows negative correlation to extroversion (p<0.05), neuroticism (p<0.05), lie (p<0.05) and psychoticism (p<0.05) personality domains of nursing students. Students having extroversion used significantly more of support seeking style (p=0.05), avoiding (p=0.05), venting negative feelings (p=0.05) and less use of substance abuse (p=0.05) styles. A significantly higher group difference was observed in academic (p=0.015), personal (p=0.015) and environmental areas (p=0.004) and was associated with psychoticism (p=0.029) in students. Academic stress shows negative correlation with different dimensions of personality of nursing students. Students with extroversion had significantly more use of positive and less use of negative coping styles to adjust in environment.