Meaning In Life as a Moderator of Stress in Undergraduate Students

Stress is a common predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factor of psychological and physical illnesses. Various studies have shown a beneficial role of having a meaning in life with regards to stress. There are no local studies available that have studied the correlation between the two constructs of perceived stress and meaning in life, in the Pakistani population. Therefore this study aims to determine correlation between scores of MIL scale and scores of Stress, in undergraduate students. A total of 254 undergraduate students were selected as respondents in the study. They were assessed for perceived stress and meaning in life using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Purpose in Life Scale (PIL) respectively. It was a cross sectional study, demographic and clinical variables were collected via a Performa. On average females scored higher (M = 2.20, SD = 0.70) than males (M = 1.78, SD = 0.52,) on perceived stress. While males scored (M = 3.57, SD = 0.55) significantly t (244) = 4.69, p <.05) higher on purpose in life questionnaire as compared to females (M = 3.21, SD = 0.69). Correlation coefficient was found to -0.52 representing a significant negative correlation between the two variables. R2 came out to be 0.27 signifying that 27 % of the variance in perceived stress is accounted by meaning in life. There is a strong correlation between meaning in life and perceived stress. Further it was also found that female gender was more vulnerable to stress and less likely to score high on meaning in life. Conversely male gender was more likely to score higher on meaning in life and lower on perceived stress.