Impacts of Stress Coping Approaches on Covid-19 Anxiety: A Sample of Turkish Medical School Students

Abstract

We aimed to assess Covid-19 anxiety among Turkish medical school students. More specifically, we examined the association between the participants’ age, gender, grades, stress coping approaches and Covid-19 anxiety using a quantitative design. The participants were 875 (493 female and 480 male students) medical school students between 19 and 26 years old. The participants completed Ways of Coping Inventory and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale. It was observed that university students in the schools of medicine used stress coping approaches such as searching for social support and self-confident. ANOVA analyses revealed that female medical school students had higher mean scores for the search for social support, optimistic, submissive, and helpless approaches, while male medical school students had higher scores for self-confident approach. Post hoc analysis indicated that the first-grade medical school students used self-confident stress coping approach more often than the higher-grade medical school students. We established that 21 years and older medical school students used submissive stress coping approach more often than younger students. Hierarchical regression revealed that gender female, submissive and helpless approaches explained 11% of the variance in Coronavirus anxiety.