INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACADEMIC ANXIETY, COPING STRATEGIES & RISK-TAKING BEHAVIOUR IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the correlation and analyse the predictor relationship for academic anxiety, the subscales of coping strategies and risk-taking behaviour in university students. The sample consisted of 195 students in the age group of the 18-26 years. The Academic Anxiety Scale by (Cassady, 2020) was used to measure academic anxiety, the Brief- COPE by (Carver, 1997) was used, to measure coping strategies, and the Risk-Taking Behaviour questionnaire (RT-18) by (de Haan et al., 2011) was utilised to measure risk-taking behaviour. The analysis of the data collected was done using Pearson’s Product- Moment Correlation and simple linear regression analysis. The findings revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between academic anxiety and emotion focussed coping strategies, academic anxiety and avoidant coping strategies, and avoidant coping strategies and risk-taking behaviour, however the relationship between academic anxiety and problem focussed coping strategies, problem focussed coping strategies and risk-taking behaviour, emotion focussed coping strategies and risk-taking behaviour, and between academic anxiety and risk-taking behaviour was found to be not significant. The impact of academic anxiety on risk-taking behaviour in university students was found to be not significant. Results also showed that the subscales of coping strategies explained 5.5% variance in the risk-taking behaviour. While, of the components of coping strategies, only avoidant coping strategies significantly and positively predicted risk-taking behaviour, the rest of the subscales of coping strategies i.e. problem focussed coping strategies and emotion focussed coping strategies did not yield significant outcomes. Hence, the students who reported higher avoidant coping strategies tend to report higher risk-taking behaviour.