The impact of resilience on perceived chronic stress in undergraduate psychology students

The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyze the relationship between academic stressors and chronic stress in undergraduate psychology students, and to identify whether resilience and/or social support function as mediators amid this relationship. Students from the University of Luxembourg and the University of Trier (N = 152) were recruited to fill out an online questionnaire consisting of the Trier inventory of chronic stress (Schulz et al., 2004), the resilience scale (Leppert et al., 2008), the perceived social support scale (Kliem et al., 2015), and five dimensions of academic stressors (Herbst et al., 2016). Results show a positive correlation between academic stressors and chronic stress. Multiple regression analysis prove that neither gender, home university, additional occupation nor social support are significant predictors of chronic stress. Compared to academic stressors and resilience, which account for more than 56% of the variance of students’ experienced chronic stress. Furthermore, academic stressors and chronic stress are mediated by resilience but not by perceived social support. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for the development of intervention programs against chronic stress of undergraduate students.