Objective:

To identify the differences (in men and women) and the relationship between emotions and coping strategies in university students when they fail an exam at the beginning of the school year.

Method:

The study was non-experimental and cross-sectional with multiple continuous variables, in which 1,774 Mexican university students participated (54 % women and 46 % men) of mean age 20.72 years (SD = 2.27). Two tools were used. The first one was the “Emotions scale when you fail”: displeasure, guilt, shame, sadness, fear, frustration, anger, anguish, and indifference (α = 0.94), and the second tool was “Coping strategies when you fail”: yelling, blaming someone else, reflecting, failing the exam, seeking advice, avoiding talking about it, avoiding thinking about it, pretending to be fine, using social media, listening to music, hanging out with friends, going out alone, talking to family (α = 0.88).

Results:

In the tool “Emotions scale when you fail,” significant differences were found between men and women in every factor and its intensity. The most commonly used coping strategies for women (M = 2.96, SD = 0.66) and men (M = 2.69, SD = 0.67) were assertive and self-constructive, and the least commonly used were aggressive-defensive. As for the evasion strategies, although they did not show differences between men (M = 2.00, SD = 0.78) and women (M = 2.11; SD = 0.84) in the general sample correlations, those strategies were the ones that had the highest scores with emotions (r = 0.53 **), followed by the search for solutions (r = 0.38 **) and assertive and self-critical (r = 0.42 **). When performing the contrast analysis among women (r = 50 **) and men (r = 0.56 **), evasion strategies were the ones that showed the highest correlation with emotional factors (r = 0.50 **).

Conclusions:

Although statistically significant differences were found between men and women in emotion intensity, women being the ones that showed greater intensity, no differences were found in aggressive-defensive coping strategies, evasion, and support seeking. Requesting help is an indicator that women are (1) able to recognize that they have a problem that is currently beyond their abilities to solve independently and (2) able to ask for help in order to solve problems. Knowing which emotions university students experience and the coping strategies they use when they fail, gives the support staff in charge a chance to implement actions that help strengthen them and move forward with their academic journey. It is important to support students, because the coping strategies that showed the highest correlation with emotions were the evasion strategies, which can have further negative consequences such as going from failing an exam to failing the subject.

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