A comparative study on academic stress and coping strategies between adolescents studying in selected urban and rural colleges at Mangalore

Adolescence is the second decade of life. Adolescents represent about one fifth of India's population. Stress has become an important factor in academic circle as well as in our society. Modern school going adolescents are experiencing enormous amount of stress. Healthy coping is essential to overcome such situations. The aims of this study were to assess and compare the academic stress and coping strategies between adolescents studying in selected urban and rural colleges at Mangalore. A comparative descriptive research design was adopted for this study. The sample was drawn through simple random sampling technique and consisted of 60 each urban and rural college. A structured stress rating scale and coping rating scale was used to assess and compare the academic stress and coping strategies. The result showed that, Most of the urban subjects (83.3%) had severe academic stress and 16.7% of them had very severe academic stress, whereas in the rural area all the subjects had moderate academic stress. Most of the urban subjects (98.3%) coping was moderate and 1.7% subjects had good coping. All the adolescents in rural area showed good coping The academic stress of urban adolescents (M-41) was consistently high when compared to that of the rural adolescents(M-22) and the coping strategy adopted by rural adolescents( M-29.5) were consistently higher than that of the urban adolescents.(M-21) There was no significant association of academic stress scores and coping strategies scores of urban and rural adolescents and selected demographic variables. The findings of the study suggest that college students should play an active role in stress management. On one hand they can learn various stress coping measures from various channels and transform anxiety frustration caused by inadequate adaptation to stress. Training students on positive coping strategies, reducing stressor-related school training, and improving parent and teacher supports to the students will help to improve this condition.