Perceived Stress of Peruvian University Students

Background. Dealing with the changes of adolescence creates a great deal of stress. Although the specific stressors experienced by young people are strongly dependent on the cultural context in which they live, very few studies have been carried out to investigate the sources of stress and the way adolescents cope with them in countries other than North America or Europe. The present paper examines life stressors and coping mechanisms in a Latin American context. Purpose: To examine life stressors and mechanisms to cope with stress among Peruvian university students. Methods. A questionnaire study was performed involving 558 male and 523 female students enrolled at one public and two private universities in Lima, Peru. Stressors were measured with an adapted version of the Problem Questionnaire (Seiffge-Krenke, 1995), yielding perceived stress scores on 6 sources of stress: university, future, parents, peers, relationships and self. Coping style was assessed via the COPE (Carver et al., 1989), distinguishing between problem focused, emotion focuses and avoidant coping styles and their respective strategies. Results. The overall perceived stress levels reported by the students in the sample were fairly low. The most important stressors were uncertainty about the future and self, with parents, relations, peers and university scoring lower. Students from low SES experienced more problems related to self and university than high or middle SES students, but did not differ in coping styles. However, in terms of strategies they more often use suppressing of competing activities, venting emotions, and behavioural disengagement, and seek less emotional support. While no significant gender differences were found for perceived stress levels, female students made more often use of emotion-focused coping. Conclusions: While the cultural context differs, the problems that are encountered by Peruvian university students and the coping styles they apply are comparable to those of American and European students