RELIGIOSITY AND MEANING IN LIFE AS FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH RESILIENCE AND PERCEIVED STRESS IN HEALTH SCIENCES STUDENTS

The study aimed to examine the impact of aspects of religiosity and meaning of life on resilience and perceived stress in health sciences students. The study was conducted with 227 Bulgarian undergraduates. The instruments used were Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiosity and Spirituality (BMMRS), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ). Analyses showed that meaning in life and organizational religiousness positively predicted resilience. Positive religious coping performed as a positive predictor of perceived stress, whereas the presence of meaning in life acted as its negative predictor. Resilience fully mediated the relationship between organizational religiousness and perceived stress, and it partially mediated the relationship between meaning in life and perceived stress. Findings indicated that meaning in life and participation in organized religious practices are protective factors that strengthen students’ ability to positively adapt to daily stress, address the resilience as a mechanism through which these factors lead to more positive appraisals of stress as well as shows the tendency to cope with stress through the transcendent source as unfavorable to subjective perception on stress. Practical implications of the findings and directions for future research were discussed.