The Role of Resiliency in Stress and Coping Styles

Stress is a prevalent issue for college students and is correlated with worsened health and lower GPA. To deal with stress, college students use adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies. Exploring the effects of resiliency on coping behaviors may help promote using more adaptive coping strategies to deal with stress. Together, resiliency, stress, and coping are understudied. The present study sought to examine the relationship among resiliency, stress, and coping strategies. Participants (N=236, Mage=19.62, SD=2.34) were emailed a survey and responded to demographic, stress, coping, and resiliency questions. Coping styles and resiliency did not differ depending on year in college. Neither resiliency nor adaptive coping was higher for upperclassmen than underclassmen. Resiliency was negatively correlated with maladaptive coping and stress but positively correlated with adaptive coping. The mediation effect of resiliency was tested using bootstrapping procedures. There was a significant indirect effect of stress on adaptive coping styles through resiliency, b = -0.22, Bca CI [-0.34, -0.12]. This represents a medium effect, k2 = .16, 95% Bca CI [.087, .2430]. There was no significant indirect effect of resiliency on use of maladaptive coping styles. Findings indicate resiliency is positively correlated with adaptive coping and negatively correlated with maladaptive coping and stress. Resiliency mediated the relationship of stress on adaptive coping but not stress on maladaptive coping. This implies that the more resilient an individual is, the greater chance of using adaptive coping methods for stress. Future research should focus on enhancing resiliency so students can use more adaptive coping skills