The impact of perceived stress and coping behaviors on college adjustment for undergraduate students with learning disabilities.

Abstract

In view of comparatively low graduation rates of post-secondary education for students with learning disabilities, the extant literature was reviewed on stress, coping and college adjustment for this population. Undergraduate students with learning disabilities may be at an increased risk of attrition due to higher perceived stress and greater tendencies to utilize emotion-focused and avoidance coping behaviors. The relationship of perceived stress and coping behaviors to college adjustment was investigated using a sample of 50 undergraduate university students with documented learning disabilities. The predictive ability of perceived stress and coping behaviors for college adjustment was determined using self-report questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were performed to determine the main effects of stress and coping on college adjustment and the possible presence of an interaction effect when stress and coping behaviors are combined. Overall, results did offer support for the contention that increased stress and passive coping behaviors negatively impacted college adjustment. Importantly, stress and emotion coping negatively impacted college adjustment for this sample, but it was not more so than the general university population. These findings suggest that university students with learning disabilities are experiencing similar amount of stress and exhibiting similar coping behaviors as their peers without learning disabilities.