Academic Stress and Coping Dynamics: Appraisal and Religious Coping among Muslim University Students in Indonesia

Abstrak

This study aims to analyze the dynamics of academic stress among university students by examining the relationships among academic stressors, personal and contextual conditions, appraisal, stress reactions, and coping strategies. The study employed a descriptive qualitative design involving ten students from the Islamic Guidance and Counseling Study Program at UIN North Sumatra, Indonesia. The researchers selected the participants through purposive sampling based on their experiences of academic pressure. The researchers collected data through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed the data thematically using an inductive–deductive strategy. The findings show that academic stress primarily emerged from accumulated assignments, overlapping deadlines, examinations, grade expectations, research activities, and thesis preparation. These academic demands interacted with personal and contextual conditions, including self-confidence, overthinking, family pressure, financial circumstances, and employment responsibilities. Relatively similar demands produced different experiences of stress because students assessed their abilities, available time, perceived control, and coping resources differently. Stress reactions appeared in emotional, cognitive, physical, behavioral, and social forms. Students used combinations of problem-focused, emotion-focused, social, avoidance, and religious coping strategies that served different functions. Students primarily perceived problem-focused coping as helpful for managing sources of pressure, whereas emotion-focused and social coping helped reduce emotional tension. Avoidance coping provided temporary relief. Among some participants, religious coping functioned as a form of emotional regulation and meaning-making and complemented other coping strategies. These findings demonstrate that academic stress constitutes a dynamic process shaped by the interaction among academic demands, appraisal, life context, and students’ coping resources.

Kata kunci

• Academic Stress
• Coping Strategies
• Appraisal
• Religious Coping
• University Students