Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Wahyu Rahardjo
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Academic stress is commonly experienced by college students. There are many
stressors within academic life such as academic demands and achievements from parents,
personal inclination for academic self-actualization, amount of assignments, conflicts with
classmate(s), final writing assignment (thesis), and so on. Since not all students have the ability
to cope with the above-mentioned stressors, consequently they experience academic stress.
There are numerous factors influencing academic stress on college students. One of
them is self-esteem. Students with positive self-esteem are considered capable of coping with
many academic stressors. When students are capable of handling academic problems, then
they tend to be at low level of academic stress. Erturgut’s and Erturgut’s study (2010) supported
this statement by arguing that self-esteem relates to students’ academic stress. Students with
higher self-esteem are at lower level of academic stress.
Psychological well-being is also a factor that influences academic stress on college
students. When one, psychologically, is in state of well-being then s/he will not be thinking too
METHOD
The number of participants in this study is 153 students of Gunadarma University in
Jakarta, consisting of 75 male students and 78 female students. The participants’ ages ranged
from 18 to 22 years old (M = 20.08; SD = 0.85).
Overall GPA of the participants ranged from 2.10 to 3.72 (M = 2.84; SD = 0.27). Mean of
female students is slightly higher (M = 2.87; SD = 0.24) than male students (M = 2.81; SD =
0.29).
Self-esteem. Self-esteem is positive self-image or self-evaluation felt or perceived by
someone about himself/herself (Mruk, 2006; Papalia, Olds, & Feldman, 2004). Scale of self-
esteem was adapted from Rosenberg’s scale (1965). The scale consists of 10 items with
Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.926.
Psychological well-being. Psychological well-being is positive attitude toward oneself so
that s/he is able to develop his/her potential (Ryff, 1989). To measure psychological well-being,
Flourishing Scale, developed by Diener, Wirtz, Tov, Kim-Prieto, Choi, Oishi, and Biswas-
Diener( 2010), was used. This scale consists of 8 items with Cronbach 's Alpha of 0.952 .
Academic stress. Academic stress is one’s perception towards parents’ and lecturers’
expectations regarding high academic achievements which tends to be negative (Ang, Huan, &
Braman, 2007). To measure academic stress, Ang’s, Klas Sen’s, Chong’s, Huan’s, Wong’s,
Yeo’s, and Krawchuk’s (2009) was used. This scale has two aspects, namely (1) inability to
On the other hand, it also appears that the influence of self-esteem towards
psychological well-being is 0.16 (p < .05) and the influence of psychological well-being towards
academic stress is -0.23 (p < .01). This indicates that the higher the self-esteem, students’
psychological well-being is also higher. In addition, it also appears that the higher the
psychological well-being of students, the level of students’ academic stress is lower.
Some previous studies have findings that there is negative correlation between self-
esteem and academic stress on students. Self-esteem can help students avoid academic stress
and even self esteem is able to reduce negative symptoms of students’ academic stress (Isiklar,
CONCLUSION
Positive self-esteem can be a double-edged sword in relation to academic stress.
College students should get good support from parents, lecturers, as well as from other parties
so that expectations of attaining high academic achievements generated from positive self-
esteem do not trigger academic stress. However, it is also important to have positive self-
esteem, considering that it can help students feel, psychologically, in the state of well-being so
students will not experience academic stress.