Stress, Coping And Social Support:Research On Graduate Students’ Stress

In recent years, with the rapid growth in the scale as well as the intense social competition, the stress graduate students are facing, which result from study, career selection, marriage, interpersonal communication and so on, is becoming more and more intense. In order to better graduate students’life, improve the overall quality of education, teachers and theory researchers in universities should attach great importance to graduate students’mental health.The research adopts the method of investigation and questionnaires, selecting515graduate students of three grades in four universities of Nanjing, which contains Nanjing University, Southeast University, Nanjing Normal University as well as Nanjing University of Science and Technology, achieves a feedback of as much as98.06%. The purpose of the research is to investigate their main stressor, coping strategies when they face sever stress and the social support they receive from others. Furthermore, the research tries to deal with the relationship between stress, coping and social support so as to provide theoretical evidence and practical advice for the teachers and theory researchers in universities.The following are the conclusions of this study:1. General situation of stress for graduate studentsConsidering the effect of the stressor, the main stressor graduate students in Nanjing face are as follows:study, career selection, economic, variation, interpersonal communication and love. In the fact of career selection, femal students suffer more than male; the significant difference is also found in the married and unmarried who tend to have lower stress; students coming from countryside, generally, have more stress than others; students whose economic condition is not so good suffer more in the fact of employment, study as well as economic than the well-beings; great difference of employment stress can be found among students who are in different majors, with student of engineering suffering less stress; students in grade three have more stress in study and economic than grade one; Then, students from different school distinct from each other, those who are in Nanjing Normal University suffer more in the fact of employment and love pressure.2. General situation of coping for graduate studentsFrom Overall, most graduate students in Nanjing tend to coping stress actively. There is not so much significant difference in graduate students, considering the factor of sex, grade, economic, marriage condition. Students from only-child-family, however, tend to cope passively compared with others. What’s more, student of engineering tend to be more active than students of science.3. General situation of social support for graduate studentsGenerally speaking, the objective support, subjective support and the overall amount of support which graduate students obtain are higher than national norm. The utilization of support, however, is lower. The main source of social support are families, friends, lovers and teachers, which are significantly higher than school and official organization.Considering the amount of objective support, subjective support as well as the utilization of support, females get more than males; students from countryside obtain a great more support than others and they tend to easily realize what they get from others; students whose economic situation is not so good get less objective support than the well-beings; there is also a difference between only-child-family and others, with only child family getting less subjective support; Finally, great difference can be found between different universities. The ones from Southeast University get more subjective support than students from Nanjing University. Students from Nanjing Normal University take more use of support they receive than the ones from Nanjing University of Science and Technology.4. Relationship between stress, coping and social support Generally speaking, there is a strong correlation between stress and coping, social support and coping. There is no strong correlation between stress and social support.Through regression analysis, it is found that stress and social support have a predictive function to one’s choice of coping. Social support acts as a mediator between stress and coping strategies.What’s more, the followings are the points we educator should attact great important to:1. The most sever press graduate students face is from study.2. The employment pressure is the chief one for female students.3. Females graduate students tend to be more active.4.Subjective support is more useful than other kind of support.5. The support from teachers make great siginificance for students.Based on the findings of the research, the following suggestions are proposed:1. According to the characteristics of graduate students, help students solve mental problem.2. Set up perfect social support network to improve graduate students mental health.3. Help students develop an active attitude towards stress to enhance their ability of coping.