A comparison of the sources of stress and coping strategies of college athletes versus nonathletes

The topic of stress in college has received much attention in recent years. My study departs from previous research by looking at the relationship between stress and intercollegiate participation, gender, and year in college (class). Specifically, the impact of various sources of stress on college athletes and non-athletes and the coping strategies used to deal with stress constituted the focus of this dissertation. The sample was comprised of college students from two east coast universities. I developed separate stress and coping questionnaires, and a data form for each subject to fill out. The instruments were distributed by coaches and professors. A factor analysis, ANOVA and MANOVA procedures, F tests, and a correlation were used on the data. No significant differences were found between the athletes and non-athletes in their overall stress and coping scores, although female non-athletes did rate their coping strategies as being more effective than did their male counterparts. The stress and coping factors revealed several significant differences. For instance, non-athletes reported experiencing more stress on the factor I labeled, Career/Future-Oriented Stress , and males scored higher on the athletic and psychosexual stress factors, while women rated the career and self-control factors as being more stressful. Additionally, Athletic Stress received one of the highest mean scores of all the stress factors. The coping factor results showed that athletes and males tended to take what I called more active approaches, while non-athletes and females relied on passive and/or support-system strategies. The results do not support the theory of an athlete/non-athlete dichotomy in the area of stress. However, they point out the need to seriously address several types of stressors which effect college students, such as the self-control issues and career concerns of women, and sports-related stresses facing athletes. It also seems apparent that the coping strategies of the students in general are all too often more unhealthy than helpful. Procedural adjustments for future research are suggested, particularly for the sample distribution among the classes which had serious confounding effects on the present study\u27s results