Stress Amongst Private University Students in Malaysia: Do Personality Differences Matter?

Introduction

The prevalence of stress among university students in Malaysia is a serious concern (Nordin, Talib, Yaacob, & Sabran, 2010). For example, Nordin et al. (2010) found that 34.4% of undergraduate students out of 1,467 respondents said they have signs of potential mental health problems. In another study (Islam, Low, Tong, Yuen, & Abdullah, 2018), as high as 30% of 1,023 students said they experienced stress, 4.4% suffered from severe depression. There is mounting concern by the Malaysian government about the mental health of undergraduate students in Malaysia (Othman, Kelvin, Othman, & Yasin, 2013). Survey has shown that 9.7 per cent of university students in Malaysia surveyed had severe depression, 29 per cent had extreme severe anxiety, and 5.1 per cent had too severe stress (Sani, 2018). In addition, the student suicide rate has been a serious issue among Malaysian private education institutions (The NST, 2019b). Furthermore, the deputy prime minister of Malaysia (The NST, 2019a) and director-general of the national health of Malaysia (Cheah, 2019) has acknowledged the need to identify suicide tendencies amongst teen school students in Malaysia as well.

For private universities, most stress coping mechanisms utilised to mitigate the issue focus predominantly on external stressors like understanding the demands of an academic programme, counselling related to family and personal problems, and self-caring (Sani, 2018). Factors contributing to stress include financial burden, family problems, peer pressure, and academic load (Othman et al., 2013; Ramachandiran & Dhanapal, 2018). However, internal stressors, like differences in student’s personality traits, are seldom considered when private universities consider strategies to cope with student stress. Taking into account personality differences can offer better accuracy in identifying or detecting candidates to receive early intervention. Most studies in Malaysia have focused on depression amongst medical students (Bunevicius, Katkute, & Bunevicius, 2008; Gan & Yuen Ling, 2019; Othman et al., 2013; Salam, Yousuf, Bakar, & Haque, 2013; Saravanan & Wilks, 2014). Besides, very little is known concerning whether personality differences play a role in student stress besides external stressors in private universities in Malaysia. As such, there is very little empirical research to guide the private university in this regard. This study addresses this pressing concern.