Coping Strategies Employed by Malaysian Pre-University Gifted Students to Manage Examination Stress

Abstract

Different age groups experience different levels of stress due to different causes. The main cause of stress experienced by students is academic tests and examinations (Kai-Wen, 2009). If students are not able to manage examination stress accordingly, it may lead to serious psychological, physical, and mental problems.This study generally attempts to determine the causes of stress among a group of gifted pre-university students in Malaysia.The study also attempts to evaluate the most frequent coping strategies used by ASASIpintar students to manage exam stress and also to identify the predominant type of coping strategies used by ASASIpintar students to cope with exam stress. Questionnaires were distributed randomly to gifted students of Malaysian Pre-university program at the Pusat PERMATApintar™ Negara (National Gifted Centre) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (the National University of Malaysia). All the sixty-eight respondents were from different ethnicity and religion background. The findings show that the highest percentage recorded for cause of stress among the students is the school factor (50%). Regardless, religion was found to be the most frequently used coping strategy by ASASIpintar students (84%). Another major finding was that ASASIpintar students tend to use emotion-focused coping to manage examination stress (32%) more than problem-solving focused coping strategy (26.9%)-adifference of 5.1%. It is of utmost importance for gifted students to have the ability to use appropriate coping strategies so that stress does not reach detrimental levels.