From Academic Stressors to Stress Responses in University Students: A Gender-Stratified Analysis of Coping Pathways

Academic stress is a major concern in higher education, but less is known about whether coping strategies mediate the links between specific academic stressors and stress responses in male and female students. This cross-sectional study examined, by gender, whether planning, positive reappraisal, and support seeking mediated three associations: exams with sleep disturbances, beliefs about performance with negative thoughts, and academic overload with physical exhaustion. Participants were 1014 undergraduates from a Spanish public university (35.5% men, 64.5% women; M age = 20.56, SD = 3.50), who completed the Academic Stress Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations were computed by gender, and three parallel mediation models were tested separately for men and women using PROCESS with 5000 bootstrap samples. Academic stressors were positively associated with their corresponding stress responses in both gender groups, and direct effects remained significant in all models. Indirect effects showed differentiated patterns: positive reappraisal mediated the exams–sleep disturbances and overload–physical exhaustion associations in men, and the beliefs about performance–negative thoughts association in both groups. Support seeking mediated all three associations in women, whereas planning showed no significant indirect effects. These findings support a gender-stratified understanding of academic stress and suggest that interventions should avoid assuming uniform coping pathways, instead strengthening positive reappraisal and social support resources according to the academic demands and stress responses involved.