Coping Strategies and Perceived Stress Levels According to Sex Among University Students

Worldwide, at least 25% of higher education students experience high levels of academic stress (Moscoso, 2018). In response to this, students need to use various coping strategies to reduce stress, as they face an excess of tasks, activity overload, and a perceived need for competition and academic excellence, all of which affect their academic performance. Currently, there is limited information on coping strategies and academic stress in the state of Campeche. Given this common problem among students, the objective of this study is to identify the level of academic stress and the use of coping strategies according to sex among university students in the state of Campeche. This research is quantitative, cross-sectional, non-experimental, descriptive, comparative, and uses simple random probabilistic sampling. The population consisted of students from the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, with a sample of 229 students from the Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. The instruments applied were the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14) and the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI). Data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical program. The results showed that women presented high levels of stress (M = 27.10), while men were at a moderate level (M = 23.52). Likewise, women tended to use maladaptive coping strategies more frequently than men, such as wishful thinking (p = 0.050) and social withdrawal (p = 0.013).