Examination of help seeking behavior and coping with stress between Turkish student and the students coming from Middle Asia: Example of KTÜ

The aim of this research is to search the behaviours of Turkish student and the students coming from Middle Asia to Turkey for university education while coping with stress and help seeking. Besides this primary purpose, this research aims at to find out the differences between these two groups of students in coping and help seeking behaviour. This research is carried out with 140 students who have been selected randomly from the Karadeniz Technical University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Faculty of Architecture and Engineering. The 70 % of participants is from Middle Asia and 70 % participants of is from Turkey. In the Middle Asian group, the numbers of girls is 18 (26%) and the boy is 52 (74%) While in the Turkish group, the number of girls (n=35, 50%) is equal to the number of boys. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were employed in this study. The data of this research were collected using Özbay & Şahin' s (1997) Inventory for Coping with Stress, and Özbay, Yazıcı, Palancı & Koç's (1999) Attitude Scale for Help Seeking. A form was used for collecting various demographic variables. Descriptive statistics and t test were used in the analyses of the data collected. The data were analysed with SPSS 10. for windows. All data were tested at df=.05. The results revealed that there were some certain differences between these two groups of students in coping and help seeking. Firstly, the differences between Middle Asian girls and boys in coping were searched. The findings point out that there were significant differences in the fields of Active Planning, Emotional (Avoid.), Biochemical (Avoid.) The scores of girls in Biochemical (Avoid.) is higher than the boys. This proves that the girls used Emotional (Avoid.) that is passive coping style. The boys used Biochemical Avoidance, that is passive coping style. Examining the Turkish students in terms of gender differences, there were also significant differences in coping. The girls more used Toward Religion, Emotional (Avoid.) and Cognitive Restructuring coping styles than the boys. The results also indicated that there were some certain differences between these two groups of students for help seeking. The behaviours of Turkish students are more positive than the Middle Asian students in terms of help seeking. vin