Motivational profiles to coping stress strategies goals and management in university students

Abstract

This research was designed to know the possible correlation among the motivational orientations of the students and the choices of the coping strategies they make before the different experiences of academic stress, and, additionally, to know if this could change based on the different orientation to goals. The participants were 468 university students with an average age of 21.82 years old (DT=3.13). A quick cluster analysis classified them into 5 groups with different orientations of approximation goals, and learning and performance avoidance. The coping factor that caused a greater degree of unanimity in the responses of all the orientation groups was Search for Social Support. This was not the case of the other two factors, Positive Reassessment and Resource Planning and Management, with a much more uneven presence among some groups and others, according to their motivational orientations, as there were significant differences between the avoidance and approximation groups in favour of the latter. It would be convenient to provide programmes to the students in order to learn to manage stress, to encourage the coping resources, to promote the motivational support and the positive affectivity, and to train abilities in order to know how to respond to the academic demands, and so, avoiding their vulnerability to the stress they generate