Abstract:

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the degree of university students’ perceived academic stress, which represents a serious problem for the effectiveness and results of the entire university study. An effort to achieve a higher level of academic performance may initiate academic stress and lead to low academic performance. The occurrence and development of academic stress is affected by a number of factors, one of the strongest being the personality (personality traits). Personality traits are based on the Big Five concept, constitute a fundamental and stable part of the personality, and thus play an important role in students’ functioning at university (and of course not only at university). In other words, it can be expected that the degree of academic stress will vary depending on personality traits. Therefore, the main research questions were as follows: “What are the correlations between personality traits (according to the Big Five concept) and academic stress in university students?” and “Does gender affect the relationship between personality traits and academic stress?” The research sample comprised 539 university students from the faculties of education (mean age = 22.8, SD = 6.53), of whom 57 were male (mean age = 26.4, SD = 9.09) and 482 female (mean age = 22.4, SD = 6.03). The research method included the application of two questionnaires. The Academic Stress Inventory (ASI, Novotný & Křeménková, 2020) is a new 17-item questionnaire, which uses 4 subscales (Stress related to study requirements; Work/Life balance; Organizational and social aspects of study; Expectation of good performance) on a 5-point Likert scale to identify the degree of experienced academic stress. The reliability of the questionnaire subscales equals ω = 0.813, 0.823, 0.648 and 0.66. The ten item personality measure (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) is a 10-item scale using a 7-point Likert scale to measure the basic personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) based on the Big Five concept. The reliability of the questionnaire subscales achieves an acceptable value of ω = 0.79, 0.64, 0.78, 0.63 and 0,74. The data were analysed in SPSS 21 using descriptive statistics calculation, Pearson correlation analysis, calculation of age-adjusted standardized scores (standardized linear regression residues), t-tests, and linear regression analysis. The study was conducted in compliance with applicable ethical principles. According to the standardized “z” scores of all age-adjusted variables, the results showed that personality traits were particularly associated with stress related to study requirements (Adj. R2 = 0.199); in the other dimensions of academic stress the effect of personality traits is negligible (Adj. R2 = 0.026 – 0.08). The regression models were strongly affected by the predictors of emotional stability and conscientiousness, and less strongly affected by gender, extraversion, and openness to experience.

Keywords:

Personality, academic stress, university students.