The analysis of the relation between cognitive flexibility and perceived stress levels of college students

In this study, it?s aimed to examine the relation between cognitive flexibility and perceived stress levels of college students in terms of gender, age and socio-economic status.The sample of the study consisted of 484 students from different departments at Cukurova University in 2009 and 2010. ?Cognitive Flexibility Scale? (Martin & Rubin, 1995), adapted to Turkish by the researcher, was used to measure cognitive flexibility which is the dependent variable of the study. The data related to the perceived stress, the other dependent variable of the study, were gathered by ?Perceived Stress Scale? (Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, 1983), the data related to socio-economic status were gathered by ?Socio-economic Status Scale? (Bacanlı, 1997) and lastly, the data related to the personal information of the students were gathered by ?Personal Information Form?, designed by the researcher. Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Independent Samples T Test, one-way ANOVA, Mann- Whitney U Test and Kruskall Wallis H Test were used in analyzing the data.The results suggest that there is a negative and meaningful relation between perceived stress and cognitive flexibility of college students. It is found that there is a meaningful difference in both perceived stress and cognitive flexibility of the students in terms of their gender. It?s also found that while the cognitive flexibility of male students was higher than the female students, the perceived stress levels of female students were pretty higher than the male students. Additionally, it is seen that while there is no meaningful relation between socio-economic status and cognitive flexibility, there is a negative relation between perceived and socio-economic status. No meaningful relation is found between gender and cognitive flexibility. However, there is seen a positive relation between the ages and the cognitive flexibility scores of the students.Keywords: Cognitive flexibility, Perceived stress