Effect of self-leadership on stress coping in dental hygiene students

Objectives : This study examined the stress-coping methods used by Dental Hygiene students according to their degree of self-leadership to provide basic data for students` self-leadership training programs. Methods : Dental Hygiene students in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do were surveyed to measure their self-leadership in six categories-self-expectation, rehearsal, goal-setting, self-compensation, self-criticism, and constructive thinking-sand, in four categories-sproblem-centered coping, social support coping, emotional coping, and wishful thinking coping-son a scale of 1 through 5. Results : The findings of the study were as follows: The overall average score of self-leadership was 3.34 and the scores for each subfactor were 3.82 for self-compensation, 3.57 for self-expectation, 3.44 for rehearsal, 3.42 for goal-setting, 3.30 for self-criticism, and 3.12 for constructive thinking. The overall average score of stress-coping was 3.29 out of 5 and the scores for active coping were 3.14 for problem-centered coping and 3.38 for social support coping and for passive coping were 3.69 for wishful thinking coping and 2.95 for emotional coping. Self-leadership showed significant difference in terms of satisfaction with major and motivation for application. The six sub-factors of self-leadership and problem-centered coping and wishful thinking coping, the sub-factors of stress-coping, had significant correlations. Self-compensation and constructive thinking were significant factors of self-leadership that affect stress-coping. Conclusions : Based on the above findings, it was found that Dental Hygiene students` self-leadership is related to the use of efficient stress-coping. Therefore, it would be necessary to develop and apply educational approaches to improve their self-leadership so they can efficiently cope with various stressors that they will face after finding jobs.