Relationship Between Personality and Coping with Stress Among Undergraduates of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Personality and stress play an important role in our daily life. Stress will bring a positive effect, i.e. as a motivation if we can manage and handle it well. Therefore strategy of coping style is very important when one is under stress. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between personality type and coping with stress style among undergraduates of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Specifically, the aim is to find out whether types of personality will affect the coping style when an undergraduate is under stress. This study also investigates the influence of demographic aspects of gender, ethnicity and stream of faculty on the relationship. Data were collected using questionnaires which were distributed to a total of 370 undergraduates from various faculties. Psychological test tools of NEO Five Factor Inventory and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situation were used to determine the personality and coping style of the respondents. The data were analyzed using SPSS. The data analysis techniques include descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, nonparametric correlation and partial nonparametric correlation tests. The results show that there are moderate positive correlations between Conscientiousness and problem-focused coping style, and between Neuroticism and emotion-focused coping style. Besides that, there are significant weak positive correlations between Extraversion and Openness with problem-focused coping style. Nonparametric test shows that Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are different between the genders. Results also show that Extraversion and Conscientiousness personality types, and the Avoidance coping style are significantly different among the ethnics. A few suggestions were also given for further study in the futur