Everyday Coping and Stress: The Role of Musicb Listening and Emotion Regulation among Engineering Students in Sikkim

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21388555

Eric Dural (Department of Education, Government of Sikkim, Sikkim)

Engineering educationoverall is exceptionally challenging and the amount of stress felt by the students is often underestimated. The objective of the study is to investigate the relationships between music listening, emotional regulation and perceived stress among engineering students in Sikkim, India. It also investigates how students engage with music as an everyday coping practice alongside two everyday coping strategies (reappraisal & suppression) to cope with institutional stress. A quantitative research methodology and cross-sectional design were employed, with data collected from 105 students enrolled in an engineering programme at an engineering institution through self-report measures. Despite using music widely to relax, the student’s results were not predicted. Music listening had no significant relationship with perceived stress. Instead, the focus was more on internal cognitive routines: cognitive reappraisal emerged as a strong predictor of the stress experience. While emotional suppression was much less potent than extant theory would suggest. These findings indicate that for these students, the cognitive rehearsal of their circumstances is more powerful than the music of their everyday lives. By linking music listening to emotion regulation, the study presents a more grounded approach to non-clinical coping, moving it away from “magic cure” behaviours to the cognitive effort students expend to keep going. For student support services, this signals that while everyday habits like engaging with music serve a “pause” function, the real work of stress management lies in how students manage in processing their academic reality.