Meaning In Life as a Moderator of Stress in Undergraduate Students

Stress is a common predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factor of psychological and physical illnesses. Various studies have shown a beneficial role of having a meaning in life with regards to stress. There are no local studies available that have studied the correlation between the two constructs of perceived stress and meaning in life, in the Pakistani population. Therefore this study aims to determine correlation between scores of MIL scale and scores of Stress, in undergraduate students. A total of 254 undergraduate students were selected as respondents in the study. They were assessed for perceived stress and meaning in life using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Purpose in Life Scale (PIL) respectively. It was a cross sectional study, demographic and clinical variables were collected via a Performa. On average females scored higher (M = 2.20, SD = 0.70) than males (M = 1.78, SD = 0.52,) on perceived stress. While males scored (M = 3.57, SD = 0.55) significantly t (244) = 4.69, p