Stress and coping of Russian students: do gender and marital status make a difference?

ABSTRACT

This study examines the triggers for stress, and the coping mechanisms, of Russian students in relation to their gender and marital status. Based on the Stress and Coping Questionnaire administered to 539 students, this study analyzes whether gender and marital status have an effect on academic and interpersonal stressors. This study found that female students are more likely to experience stress than male students and that single students are impacted by academic and interpersonal stressors to a higher degree than married students. Male students are more likely to use exercise to alleviate stress but also more likely to use smoking, than female students. Male students are more likely to agree that the use of a psychologist leads to a perception of weakness than female students. Female students are more likely to agree that support services were not a priority on campus and male students are more likely than female students to show a preference for talking to friends over a psychologist. The choice of confiding in family during periods of stress is less often the case for single students than for married students, while single students may be more likely to use alcohol to alleviate stress.

KEYWORDS:

• Stress
• stress Management
• higher education
• gender
• marital status
• Russia

Her areas of expertise

Social Media in marketing and teaching; Global Health; Social media marketing and Health administration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our study and the studies on which we rely, categorize gender as man or woman and we have not therefore looked at non-binary individuals and the stress experienced by these groups in post-compulsory education.

2. According to Ben-Zur (2020), emotion-focused coping regulates (tolerates, reduces, or eliminates) the physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural reactions that accompany the experience of stressful encounters. Emotion-focused coping can be positive or negative. Positive emotion-focused coping includes talking or writing about emotions, meditation and/or distraction with other activities. Negative emotion-focused coping mechanisms include the suppression of emotions, avoidance, and substance use such as alcohol or tobacco.

3. The native language of the three professors (who work in the US) is Russian (though they have a combination of Russian and US Qualifications).

4. Tertiary education refers to any type of education pursued beyond high school – it includes diplomas, undergraduate and graduate certificates, as well as associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

5. Respondents were asked to state whether they belonged to male gender or female gender. In Russian this is respectively мужской пол and женский пол and respondents were given a third option of ‘prefer not to answer’. When reporting the results here we refer to male and female students as belonging to the categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ respectively. We recognize that in translation this leads to some conflation of sex with gender and we have, as much as possible throughout this article, tried to be consistent in respect of this.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalia Ermasova

Dr. Natalia Ermasova is an Associate Professor at Governors State University, IL. She has a PhD of Public Affairs (SPEA, Indiana University, USA), PhD of Economics (Russia). Her primary research interests are capital budgeting, business ethics, public finance, risk-management, innovation management, and public finance. Before starting her work in the USA, she worked as a Professor of Finance in the Volga Region Academy for Civil Services in Russia for 12 years. She was Visiting Professor in Germany (Ludwigsburg Academy for Civil Services) and Fulbright Visiting Professor (SPEA, Indiana University). More than 45 books and articles were published in Russia and more than 30 articles published in the USA. Her articles were published in Public Finance and Management, State and Local Government Review, International Journal of Public Administration Research, Journal of Management Development. E-mail: [email protected]

Evgenia Ermasova

Evgenia Ermasova is a Junior at DePaul University working toward a Bachelor of Management (Concentrating on Human Resources). She is an HR intern at TTX Company. She has previous work experience at Morgan Stanley. Evgenia is the Director of Events for DePaul Net Impact.

Natalia Rekhter

Natalia Rekhter is an Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Health Services Administration Program at Governors State University, Illinois. She is an experienced higher education professional with expertise directing undergraduate and graduate health administration programs in public and private universities and teaching in face-to-face, online and hybrid environments. Her research agenda includes social media for marketing and education, healthcare access, and stress among different professional and demographic groups. She is a two times recipient of a Fulbright Specialist Award as well as a recipient of Serve Indiana Awards for Excellence.