Perceived Social Support and Academic Stress: The Roles of Gender and Cultural Differences

This study aimed to examine the moderating effects of cultural and gender groups in the relationship between perceived social support and academic stress among Iranian and Swedish university students. The sample consisted of 212 students (112 Iranian: 34 males, 78 females; 100 Swedish: 29 males, 71 females). The participants completed the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS; Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley,1988) and the Academic Stress Questionnaire (ASQ; Zajacova, Lynch, & Espenshade, 2005). The results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that (1) there was a negative and significant relationship between perceived social support and academic stress among Iranian students, but insignificant among Swedish students, and (2) there were nonsignificant negative correlations between social support and academic stress for both genders among Iranian and Swedish students. In sum, these findings emphasized that the functional properties of social support in predicting academic stress were dissimilar in the two cultural contexts but were similar in both gender groups.