AN INVESTIGATION OF THE STRESSORS AND COPING MECHANISM OF SPONSORED YOUTH

Abstract

Poverty related stress is a reality and it affects all those who are underprivileged. Youth in campus are not exempt. The purpose of the study was to investigate the stressors amongst sponsored youth and the respective strategies that they engaged in order to cope well. The study was guided by the following research objectives: To identify the financial stressors and coping mechanisms among the sponsored youth in the university level of education; To find out the psychological stressors and the coping mechanisms among the sponsored youth in campus; To determine the physiological stressors and coping mechanisms common among the youth in university and to analyze the situational stressors and consequent coping mechanisms among the youth in university. It adopted descriptive research design targeting 298 students under the sponsorship of Compassion International Kenya distributed in 5 projects within Nairobi.30 respondents we sampled, stratified into the 5 projects and accessed through random sampling and administered with questionnaires. Reliability Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.81 was obtained showing that the questionnaire was reliable. The data collected was summarized into frequency means and standard deviation and presented in form of tables. Pearson moment correlation was used to establish the relationship between various stressors and the various coping strategies. The study found that factors contributing to financial stress among the students were; Most of the youths did not have enough money to participate in most of the same activities as their peers do, Were spending more than they had by borrowing, Could not afford paying their bills in time and were not in a position to buy all their learning materials in time. For psychological stress, the study found that most sponsored students were always anxious, felt bored with the daily college routine, felt isolated from fundamental decisions in their lives, and did not have the right motivation to continue with their college life hence having psychological stress. On physiological stress, the study found that most of the youths sweated a lot when faced with problems in college, felt stomach pains when they were unable to complete their tasks in time. As situational stressors, most of the students felt stressed when they could not obtain their course requirement, failed in their coursework and stressed when they could not read due to power blackout. Generally, the sponsored students prefer the following coping mechanisms: planful problem-solving (R = 0.673) for financial stressors; seeking social support (R = 0.859) for psychological stressors; accepting responsibility (R = 0.811) for physiological stressors and accepting responsibility (R = 0.834) for situational stressors. The study recommends that students under sponsorship program should always seek the services and help of the guidance and counseling teachers to help them develop positive coping mechanisms to manage stress. Parents and guardians of these students should adequately provide financial support to these students as this will decrease financial stress among them. The sponsored youth should also be able to articulate their needs to the sponsors from an informed place so that the support will fully address their needs. Organizations that run scholarship programs should also improve their scholarship programs to adequately address the needs of the students, to make them more youth friendly by lessening the stressors and enable them benefit fully from the support they offer.