The Power of Patience: Management Stress for College Students

Amalia Meutia, Ika Sari Dewi, Dina Nazriani and Suri Mutia Siregar

Department of General & Experimental, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: Coping Stress, Patience.

Abstract: Stress is an integral part of our life and can occur anywhere, including among college students. In general,

stress is pressure exceeds one's perceived ability to cope. How to deal with stress is usually called coping

stress, which is the specific efforts, both behavioral and psychological, that people employ to master, tolerate,

reduce, or minimize stressful events. Two general coping strategies have been distinguished: problem focused

coping dan emotion focused coping. Whereas emotion focused coping includes self-control (part of patience’s

aspect). From this perspective, this research was aimed to investigate relationship between the level of stress

among college students and their patience. Therefore, this study discusses on the relationship between stress

and coping mechanism (patience). This study uses a quantitative correlational by using the patience scale

developed by Subandi and the stress scale on the PSS (Perceived Stress Scale). For the purpose of the study

the researcher selected 347 college students from various University and Faculty. The results of the study

showed there is a strong positive relationship between stress and patience, where stress can contribute 38.5%

of variations in student patience. In other words, the respondents in this study used coping stress in the form

of patience related to the stress they experienced. The implication of the results of this study is the basis for

making a stress management pocket book.

1 INTRODUCTION

College is a transitional period when students of all

ages undergo new experiences, meet new people and

face opportunities which may compound the stress in

their lives (Lindsay et al, 2011). Many college

students may find the academic experience very

stressful. First year student at a university are a group

particularly prone to stress (D’Zurilla & Sheedy,

1991) due to the transitional nature of college life

(Towbes & Cohen, 1996). They must adapt to being

away from home for the first time and to a new social

environment. The upper level students dealing with

pressures related to finding a job or potential life

partner.

In certain periods, students will experience

pressure related to academic responsibility, economic

problems, and lack of skills in managing time (Pariat,

2014). Based on research conducted by Widuri et al

(in Kholidah & Alsa, 2012) it was found that one of

the most common sources of stress experienced by

students was high academic demands. The lecture

assignments given contain complex instructions, tight

deadlines and high difficulties making students feel

pressured in their lectures.

Greenberg (2004) stated that students who enter

college will experience several problems (according

to the description above) so that it becomes a source

of stress for them.

Stress occurs when one sees an event or

circumstance is threatening, demanding, or beyond

his or her capacity to handle (Cohen et. al., 1983).

Stress is the response of individuals to taxing

circumstances and event called stressors, that threaten

them and tax their coping abilities. A number of

factors are involved in stress: physical and biological,

personality, cognitive, environmental and

sociocultural (Santrock, 2002).

Another approach to understanding stress

examines it as a broader perceived experience.

Perceived stress is one’s global evaluation of life as

being unpredictable, uncontrollable or overloaded.

Perceived stress is theoretically influenced by how

well an individual adapted to or coped with all of the

situational stress he or she has recently encountered,

as well as the number of stressors the individual has

faced (Cohen et. al., 1983).

Lazarus and Launier(1978) defined coping as the

process of managing stressors that have been

appraised as taxing or exceeding a person’s resources

254

Meutia, A., Dewi, I., Nazriani, D. and Siregar, S.

The Power of Patience: Management Stress for College Students.

DOI: 10.5220/0010017602540259

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 3 2019) - Social Engineering Governance for the People, Technology and Infrastructure in

Revolution Industry 4.0, pages 254-259

ISBN: 978-989-758-472-5

and as the efforts to manage environmental and

internal demand.

Different kinds of coping resources such as

humour, acceptance, denial, disengagement, drugs,

religion, seeking emotional and instrumental social

support. Some previous research show that students

use several coping strategies in order to cope with

stress. There are several ways of classifying coping

strategies but most coping responses are considered

to Lazarus and Folkman’s problem focused or

emotion-focused coping strategies (Carver & Scheier,

1994; Lazarus &Folkman, 1984).

Emotional focused coping consists of 5 forms of

coping strategies, namely self-control, distancing,

accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, and

positive reappraisal.One form of coping above is self

control, which is an attempt to regulate feelings when

facing a pressing situation. This definition is in line

with the concept of patience raised by Subandi

(2011), namely self control, accepting efforts to

overcome problems, enduring suffering, feeling the

bitterness of life without complaining, persistence,

working hard, persistent and tenacious to achieve a

goal. El-Hafiz, et al (2015) also argued that patience

can be interpreted as an initial response that is active

in holding back emotions, thoughts, words, actions

that obey the rules for the purpose of goodness

supported by optimism, never give up, the spirit of

seeking knowledge, have the spirit to open alternative

solutions, consistency and not easy to complain.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

Research conducted at Universitas Sumatera Utara.

This study is a a cross-sectional study that used a non-

experimental survey design to desribe college

students’s stress and patience profile. 347 college

student’s s from various university and faculty were

invited offline and online survey to participated in the

study.

2.1 Measurement

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is is a well-

established self-report measure based on the

psychological of stress. Cohen et al. (1983) found the

PSS to provide better predictions of psychological

symptoms, physical symptoms and utilisation of

health services than other instruments which measure

specific life events (Hamarat et al., 2001). PSS-10

measure of the degree to which situation in one’s life

are appraised as stressful. Items were designed to

assess how unpredictable, uncontrollable, or

overloaded participant find their lives to be. The

responses to the 10 items were then summed to

create a psychological stress score, with

higher scores indicates greater psychological

stress. Internal reliabilities (Cronbach’s Alpha) for

the PSS-10 were .78 in the Harris Poll

sample, and .91 in both the 2006 and 2009

eNation samples. Participants answer each

question using a five –point Likert rating scale, rate

their current level of stress ranging from 0 = never, 1

= almost never, 2 = sometimes, 3 = fairly often, 4 =

very often. The PSS-10 total scores are obtained by

reversing the scores on the four positive items, then

summing across all 10 items, so that a higher total

score indicates higher stress (Hamarat et al., 2001).

The Patience Scale used in this study was

extracted based on the patience theory proposed by

Subandi (2011). The patience scale is used to

determine an individual's ability to control himself

from emotions, tolerate delays in desires, endure

difficult situations, remain persistent in achieving

goals and solve problems, be able to accept bitter

truth with sincerity and gratitude, and be able to be

calm in dealing with all situations. The patience scale

consists of 50 items using 5 forms of response ranging

from very inappropriate to very appropriate. The

measurement results using this scale are proven valid

based on the contents and internal structure of

patience measurement. Validity analysis based on

content is done by calculating the coefficient of

Aiken's V validity and validating the validity based

on internal structure with Rasch modeling. In

addition, the measurement results with this scale

indicate a very good reliability of 0.90.

2.2 Data Analysis

The data collected analyse by descriptive statistics

(SPSS).

3 RESULTS

3.1 Psychometric Characteristics

Measurement

The results of the analysis of the psychometric

characteristics of the two scales are listed in Table 1.

The analysis of psychometric characteristics

implemented in the form of reliability estimation in

which that estimation describe the psychometric

characteristics using a coefficient. The more closest

the coefficient to 1 it is mean that the more reliable

the measurement results. According to psychometry,

The Power of Patience: Management Stress for College Students

255

reliability means that the results of the psychological

scale measurement can be trusted or the score

generated from the measurement can be used for

further analysis. The PSS gets 0.809 for the reliability

coefficient, while the Patience Scale gets 0.924 for

reliability coefficient. The coefficient values of these

two scales are in the reliable category. Based on these

results, we believe that the measurement results can

be trusted to explain the research variables.

Table 1: Reliability coefficient of PSS scale and patience

scale.

No. Scale Coefficient Remarks

1 PSS 0.809 Good

reliability

2 Patience 0.924 Good

reliability

3.2 Participants

This research was conducted on a sample of students

spread across several regions in Indonesia. Most

respondents came from the city of Medan. Students

who were respondents of this study came from

various universities. Most respondents came from the

Universitas Sumatera Utara, which amounted to 229

respondents (65.99%). If viewed from the field of

science or faculty, the most respondents came from

the Faculty of Psychology 125 respondents (36.02%).

The number of respondents involved in the study

was 347 people. From the total number of

respondents, there are 228 people (66%) aged 20-40

years. Psychologically the age category of 20-40

years is classified as early adulthood. In terms of

gender, the majority of respondents were female,

totaling 267 people (77%). Meanwhile, if viewed

from the ethnic group, the majority of respondents

came from the Batak ethnic group, namely 124 people

(36%).

Table 2: Origin of the university.

No. University Frequency %

1 Universitas Sumatera

Utara (USU)

229 66

2 Universitas Negeri

Medan (UNIMED)

12 3

3 Universitas

Muhammadiyah

Sumatera Utara

(UMSU)

5 1

4 Politeknik Negeri

Medan

3 1

5 Others 98 28

Total 347 100

Table 3: Origins of faculty.

No. Faculty Frequency %

1 Psychology 125 36%

2 Public Health 31 9%

3 Nursing 4 1%

4 Social and Political Science 38 11%

5 Pharmacy 6 2%

6 Law 10 3%

7 Dentistry 1 0%

8 Engineering 12 3%

9 Economic and Bussiness 14 4%

10 Cultural Science 6 2%

11 Mathematic and Natural

Science

5 1%

12 Medical 45 13%

13 Agriculture 3 1%

14 Others 47 14%

Total 347 100%

Table 4: Age category.

No. Age Frequency %

1 18-19 80 23%

2 20-40 228 66%

3 N/A 39 11%

Total 347 100%

Table 5: Sex category.

No. Sex Frequency %

1 Male 80 23%

2 Female 267 77%

Total 347 100%

Table 6: Ethnic.

No. Ethnic Frequency %

1 Batak 124 36%

2 Jawa 89 26%

3 Melayu 30 9%

4 Aceh 17 5%

5 Minang 8 2%

6 Other ethnic 79 23%

Total 347 100%

3.3 Parametric Statistical Assumptions

Test

To test the hypothesis in the form of a simple

regression test, it is necessary to carry out the

parametric statistical assumption test. In the research

data it is known that the data distribution approaches

the normal distribution. This condition is shown by

the histogram representation of each variable, where

the most data is in the middle, while the data on the

right and left side are fewer (Figure 1).

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Figure 1: Distribution of research data (PSS score distribution).

Figure 2: Patient scale score distribution.

The assumption test conducted next is the

linearity assumption test. The analysis showed that

the data between variables had a linear relationship,

indicated by a significance value of linearity smaller

than 0.05 and a significance value of linearity

deviation greater than 0.05 (Table 7). Based on the

test assumptions of research data it is known that this

research data can be analyzed using parametric

statistical analysis that is simple regression analysis.

Table 7: Linearity test between variable relations.

Sig.

Stress *Patience Linierity 217.381 0.00

Deviation

from

Linierity

1.031 0.420

Regression statistical analysis was chosen

because this study aims to find out whether students

have a way to protect themselves from stress. In this

study the focus is on the patience variable which is

assumed to be the way for students to deal with stress.

In the field of psychology, how to deal with stress is

Kesabaran

225200175150125100

Frequency

Histogram

Mean =173.43

Std. Dev. =21.352

N =347

The Power of Patience: Management Stress for College Students

257

called coping stress. Coping stress has two forms,

namely problem focused coping and emotional

focused coping. This research focuses on emotional

coping stress, which one form is self-control. If

viewed from the patience variable, aspects of self-

control are part of patience. Using this research data

we hypothesize that stress experienced by students is

a predictor of the emergence of patience. Statistically

we expect that the R value obtained is in the strong

category and the model is significant.

Table 8: Regression model analysis.

Model Summary

R R

Square

F Sig.

0.620 0.385 215.

576

0.00

From the results of the analysis (Table 9) it is

known that the value of R is 0.620. This value means

that there is a strong positive relationship between

stress and patience. Furthermore it is known that the

value of R squared is 0.385 which states that stress

can contribute 38.5% of the variation in students'

patience. In other words, the respondents in this study

used coping stress in the form of patience related to

the stress they experienced. In this research, it is

known that there are about 61.5% of other variables

that cause coping stress in the form of patience among

students. The analysis also shows that the regression

model in this study is significant. This statement is

supported by a significance value that is smaller than

0.001. In conditions if students are not stressed, this

model predicts that the patience of students is equal

to 4,805. If stress increases by 1 unit, patience

increases by 0.149 (Table 9).

4 DISCUSSION

The aim of the study was to investigate the coping

strategies adopted by students in college and how

these patience affect student stress. The results of this

study have highlighted that student stress is a serious

problem in colleges across Medan at present. These

results support those of Mahmoud et al. (2012) and Ji

(2011) who also found student stress levels to be

reaching dangerously high levels. High levels of

stress has been linked to symptomatic experiences

such as headaches, hyperventilation, insomnia,

fatigue, and nervousness and may also put students at

risk of developing serious health conditions such as

depression, anxiety and, in the long run, cardio-

vascular conditions.

Table 9: Predictor coefficient analysis.

Variable Unstandardized

Coefficient

Standardized

Coefficient

t S

ig.

Partial

Correlation

Constant 4.805 2.702 0

.07

Patience 0.149 0.620 14.68

.00

0.620

5 CONCLUSIONS &

RECOMMENDATIONS

This study provides a brief snapshot of the patience

and perceived stress levels of college students in

Medan, as well as the coping mechanisms they are

utilising in order to deal with their stress. The results

of the current study suggest that there were strong

positive relationship between stress and patience.

It is recommended to increase the amount of

participant to represent the more accurate stress

profile of the college students. Further research is

needed in order to address the limitations of this

study. By doing so and introducing unaccounted for

variables such as personality types and social

demographic future research can contribute further to

our understanding student stress and life satisfaction

and how these can be affected by the use of coping

strategies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is basic research scheme funded by

Universitas Sumatera Utara “Penelitian Keunggulan

Akademik (TALENTA) USU 2019“.

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