Abstract:
Background: Emotional resilience is a phrase that is becoming increasingly prevalent on various spheres of society including universities. Emotional resilience aids undergraduate students in choosing effective coping mechanisms in order to deal with stressful situations. Participation in extracurricular activities has implications on emotional resilience and coping mechanisms. Understanding the relationship between extracurricular activities, emotional resilience and coping mechanisms would contribute to the well-being of students.
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to determine the level of emotional resilience, types of coping mechanism undergraduates used and the contribution of emotional resilience towards stress coping mechanisms. This study also investigated the moderating effect of extracurricular activities on the relationship between emotional resilience and coping mechanism.
Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted among 241 randomly selected International Medical University undergraduates who consented to participate in the study. A four-part self-administered questionnaire (demographics, 14-Item Resilience Scale, Brief COPE and extracurricular activities) was used for data collection. To conceptualize the study, the independent variable (emotional resilience) was tested against the dependent variable (coping mechanisms). The moderating variable was extracurricular activity.
Sociodemographic factors, level of emotional resilience and types of coping mechanisms were analysed using descriptive statistics (mean, proportion and standard deviation). For inferential statistics, simple linear regression and independent samples t-test were performed on the independent and dependent variables. Moreover, Hayes PROCESS Macro v3.5 was used to analyse the moderating effect of extracurricular activities.
Results: Most participants had a medium level of emotional resilience with problem focused coping as the dominant type of coping mechanism use. It was also found that emotional resilience significantly contributed to the coping mechanisms. However, extracurricular activities had no significant moderating effect on the relationship between emotional resilience and coping mechanisms.
Conclusion: This study found that most IMU undergraduates were resilient and had effective coping mechanisms. However, it would be important for the institution to include syllabus or programmes to promote resilience and effective coping mechanisms among undergraduates.
Keywords: undergraduates, emotional resilience, coping mechanism, extracurricular activities
