The role of coping strategies in the academic engagement of students in Bushehr University of Medical Sciences

Coping strategies are a set of cognitive and behavioral efforts that are employed to interpret and modify a stressful situation. For students, it seems appropriate to employ coping strategies, which seems to be an important factor for academic achievement. Therefore, this study endeavored to examine the relationship between coping strategies and academic engagement in students of Bushehr University of Medical Sciences in 2017.

This correlational study was performed with 232 undergraduate students of Bushehr University of Medical Sciences through relative stratified random sampling. The instruments were three questionnaires of demographic information and academic achievement of Frederick Bloomfield, as well as a short scale of coping with Andrew Parker's stress conditions. Data analysis was done through independent t-test and Pearson test within the significance level of 0.05.

The average age of students was 21.75± 2.72 and most of them were single (86%). The mean score of students' academic motivation was 51/0 2/79 0/51 and the mean score of coping strategies was 2.99 0.43. It was found that there is a direct and significant relationship between the score of coping strategy and the score of academic motivation (p=0. 001).

The results reveled that the variable of academic engagement is of special importance in predicting coping strategies in students. As a result, guiding students in the right direction could have positive educational consequences.