Conscientiousness and academic stress among thesis-writing students

Thesis-writing students experience heightened academic stress due to the simultaneous demands of college assignments and thesis completion, leading to a significant sense of burden. A personality trait known as conscientiousness is characterized by adherence to obedient, organized, careful, determined


Introduction
Education is one aspect of supporting the future progress of the nation.As the subject of development in an evolving world marked by growing uncertainty, education institutions must offer a positive response to societal demands (Pranama, et al., 2021).Educated humans will feel academic demands if they are not ready to deal with them, and psychological disorders such as stress will arise (Ambarwati et al., 2019) Stress is an internal state resulting from physical demands, environmental and social conditions that are harmful and exceed the individual's ability to handle them.The stress associated with education is called academic stress.Academic stress is a stimulus that students assess as a discrepancy between expectations and reality, whereas academic stress is a psychological reaction to academic demands that are not by expectations and burden students' lives and disrupt their welfare (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
Academic stress can positively or negatively impact students, depending on how it is handled.Academic ability will decrease if stress increases, affecting the grade point average.Stress experienced by students can affect their daily lives and lead to negative behaviors, including alcohol addiction, drug abuse, and withdrawal from social activities.(Simpson, 2018).
The positive impact caused by stress in the form of increased creativity causes selfdevelopment to increase as long as the stress experienced by students is still within acceptable capacity limits.Stress is necessary for development when the stressful stimuli are perceived as both relevant to one's goals and controllable (Travizs, Kaszycki, Geden, Bunde, 2020).Academic stress can be caused by stressors that come from two factors, namely internal and external.A stressor is anything a person feels, and the feeling of being unable to cope is stronger than the feeling of being able to cope with the condition (Fauziyyah & Awinda, 2021).
External stressors cause stress from outside a person's self, such as beliefs, personality, or individual mindset.Internal stressors cause stress, namely a demand from within oneself, such as encouragement from the surrounding environment and pressure from parents (Fauziyyah & Awinda, 2021).
University as an educational institution has a component to support, one of them being students.Students aged 18 to 30 years old have been officially registered at a tertiary institution to study and take lessons (Rahayu & Arianti, 2020).Academic demands in higher education differ from those in school; in this context, students are required to engage in independent learning and complete their studies within the specified timeframe (Dewi, et al., 2022).
Students must carry out their obligations as students responsible for attending lectures in the academic field (Tanjung et al., 2018).The time limit for students to complete their studies is 4 to 5 years for undergraduate students or a 4-year diploma program, as stated in the Minister of Education and Culture Regulation Number 49 of 2017.Students are prone to stress because students have many activities, both academic and non-academic (Erindana et al., 2021).The numerous responsibilities and academic demands, along with the various challenges present in student life, can lead to stress, particularly for students in their final year (Yunita & Monalisa, 2022) The final assignment or thesis is an obligation that must be completed in a short period.However, solving it is not as easy as working on papers or compiling course assignments.Students who are unable to meet the academic demands they face may experience stress, commonly referred to as academic stress (Gatari, 2020).
The thesis is a written work by students currently undergoing tertiary education to obtain a bachelor's degree, containing development, research studies, and literature.In this process students encounter several challenges , including a lack of writing proficiency, the consultation process, and psychological factors.Insufficient writing capability entails difficulties in structuring thesis components and presenting data analysis.The consultation process emerges as the second factor, encompassing challenges related to comprehending lecturer feedback and finding time for discussions (Sitompul & Anditasari, 2022).
Sources of academic stress when associated with students who are writing a thesis emerge from the interaction between the teacher and students, the anxiety over the thesis result, the thesis trial that will be faced, the process of working on the thesis in groups, the influence of friends, time management skills, and students' perceptions of poor learning abilities will affect student performance (Lin & Chen, 2009).It is also mentioned by Lin and Chen (2009) as the seven aspects of academic stress.
The explanations of academic stress aspects by Lin and Chen (2009) are 1) Teacher stress is a stressor that arises as a result of the interaction between the supervising lecturer and students who are preparing their thesis due to the emergence of policies made by the supervising lecturer related to the process of working on a thesis on students (Haydon et al., 2018).2) Exam stress is a feeling of anxiety that arises in students regarding the thesis process that will be faced by students (Ramadan, Karimah, Ningrum, 2022).Result stress is a situation that students feel in relation to the demands of the thesis work to be achieved (Ambarwati et al., 2019).Time management stress is a student's ability to organize and organize time to work on a thesis so that they can complete the thesis by the target time to be achieved (Pertiwi, 2020).Peer stress is the pressure to follow the actions and standards of their peers and environment (Zimmer-Gembeck, Clear, & Campbell, 2021) {Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., Clear, S. J., & Campbell, S. M. (2021).Peer relationships and stress: Indirect associations of dispositional mindfulness with depression, anxiety and loneliness via ways of coping.Students' perceptions of their capabilities, particularly in terms of quality, are connected to self-induced stress, impacting the successful completion of a student thesis (Reddy, et al., 2018).Study stress in groups is a state of stress students feel related to the academic process in student study groups (Putri, 2022).
The results of a preliminary study on students of the Faculty of Economics and Business at University X showed that, in general, students of the Faculty of Economics and Business with an undergraduate degree of 3.5 years and the preparation of the thesis starting in semester 6, different from other faculties which began in semester 7. Students of the Faculty of Economics and Business feel inferior to the thesis they worked on, find it challenging to improve the thesis, find it difficult to find references, feel responsible for meeting parents' expectations, and feel pressured to finish the thesis as soon as possible.Based on the results of the preliminary study, students of the Faculty of Economics and Business show a tendency for students to experience academic stress.
Personality is the attitude, feeling, expression, temperament, characteristics, and behavior of a person and will manifest in a person's actions when faced with specific situations.Everyone has a standard behavior tendency or applies continuously and consistently in dealing with the situation at hand so that it becomes his characteristic (Ansori, 2020).
If the individual is aware of behavioral choices that are more appropriate and more realistic with the existing conditions, changes within the individual can occur to meet their needs.As individuals progress in their development, they confront diverse life events that contribute to the formation of their personalities, rendering each person's character unique and constantly evolving (De Vries, et al., 2021).There is a connection between personality and cognitive abilities that individuals with stable personalities tend to have better cognitive functioning in later life (Liu & Lachman, 2019) Personality is one of the factors that influence academic stress (Alwi, 2021).Personality plays a crucial role for individuals when dealing with stressful events, as it is related to how individuals cope with the stress they encounter (Varo, et al., 2023).Personality is all the general traits or all the characteristics that result in a persistent pattern and are owned by many people in responding to a situation or situation.Personality is a similar trait in responding to a group of similar stimuli and occurs over a relatively long period (Rahmadini & Indrawati, 2019).
Personality is dynamic, meaning a person's personality can change and develop to a certain maturity level.Its development is in line with one's ability to think.This ability develops from demand students encounter in their environment (Van Dijk, et al., 2020).Personality is a dynamic organization within the individual as a psychophysical system determining his unique way of adapting to the environment.An individual's personality may undergo transformations over the course of their life, particularly in response to environmental shifts or deliberate interventions (Bleidorn, et al., 2021).Costa dan McCrae (2008) developed personality theory into five main dimensions as personality characteristics in the Big Five Personalities, including 1) Openness to experience, the characteristics of individuals who like to get new information, learn new things, and are good at making new activities.2) Conscientiousness is a characteristic of individuals who are responsible, tend to be serious in doing tasks, can be relied upon, and like discipline and order.3) Extraversion is a characteristic of individuals who enthusiastically build relationships with others and new friends.4) Agreeableness is characteristic of individuals who can value others more than themselves and trust others.5) Neuroticism is the character of individuals who are easily anxious, easily nervous in dealing with problems, and easily angry when in a situation that does not match their expectations.The dimension is abbreviated as OCEAN (Bahri, et al., 2022).
This study will focus on the relationship between academic stress and conscientiousness personality.There are still differences (gaps) with previous research.Research by Ghoshal and Banerjee (2021) showed a significant positive relationship between academic stress and conscientiousness personality in students, meaning that the higher the conscientiousness personality in students, the higher the academic stress students feel.Inversely, research by Vazquez, et al. (2021) revealed that ind with a strong sense of conscientiousness tend to make better plans, thereby reducing the likelihood of experiencing significant stress.Conscientious individuals typically approach stress in a positive manner, often maintaining a belief that stress can present opportunities for improving outcomes (Chen, et al., 2022).
Conscientiousness personality is a characteristic of individuals characterized by being able to control and manage perceived impulses, measured based on achievement, obedience, regularity, discipline, and consideration (Rahmadini & Indrawati, 2019).Students with high conscientiousness typically exhibit positive self-perceptions of their capabilities and they adhere to moral principles and effectively monitor their own behavior.Additionally, they set high expectations, demonstrate strong dedication, and proactively initiate and persevere through challenges (Khodaverdian, et al., 2021) The characteristics of highly conscientious individuals have a purpose in acting, showing a strong will in behaving, being oriented, and having a determination to detail.Whereas individuals with low conscientiousness tend to be careless in their work goals, they tend to be careless, lazy, and irresponsible.Conscientiousness entails the ability to resist impulses and temptations, coupled with a high degree of purposefulness, strong will, and determination in individuals (Agbaria & Mokh, 2022) Students of the Faculty of Economics and Business who tend to stress academically without being careful in working on their thesis will cause obstacles in working on their thesis.Based on the explanation above, the researcher is interested in examining whether there is a relationship between conscientiousness personality and academic stress in students of the Faculty of Economics and Business who are preparing their thesis at a University.
Hopefully, this finding can build the awareness of students of the Faculty of Economics and Business at a University preparing their thesis to be more aware of academic stress and increase their conscientiousness character.A high conscientiousness personality is expected to reduce academic stress experienced by students preparing their thesis.

Method
This study used a quantitative correlational method.The study population consisted of 723 students at the Faculty of Economics and Business who were preparing their thesis at a University.The sampling technique used simple random sampling, where each population is likely to be a sample (Sugiyono, 2016).The subjects in this study were 200 students based on Isaac Michael's table with an error rate of 10%.
The measuring tool for the data collection process is an academic stress scale called the Academic Stress Inventory (ASI) developed by Lin and Chen (2009), consisting of 28 items which researchers then modified into 25 items from 7 aspects of academic stress (example: "I feel afraid every doing thesis guidance").Aspects of academic stress consist of teacher stress, test stress, result stress, time management stress, peer stress, self-inflicted stress, and studying stress in groups.
While the conscientiousness personality is measured by the Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by John and Srivastava (1999), this study used especially part of the conscientiousness personality scale, which was then trans-adapted by Ramdhani (2012) into Bahasa Indonesia, consisting of 8 items which researchers then modified to become 13 items out of 6 conscientiousness personality indicators (example: "I am lazy to do my thesis") courtesy of (Costa & McCrae, 2008).Conscientiousness personality indicators consist of competence, order, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline, and deliberation.Researchers only take the conscientiousness dimension because the Big Five Personality theory uses a multidimensional model, meaning each dimension can be separated (Costa & McCrae, 2008).
Both measurement tools use a Likert scale with a range of answers from point 1 (Strongly Disagree) until point 5 (Strongly Agree).Both scales were tested for reliability using Cronbach Alpha reliability with the help of IBM SPSS version 24.The reliability test obtained a coefficient of alpha Cronbach is 0.894 for the ASI scale and 0.709 for the BFI conscientiousness personality scale.
Testing corrected-item correlation for both instruments' validity with the IBM SPSS version 24 tools toward 40 respondents obtained the results: 22 valid items and three failed for ASI.Then there were ten valid items and three invalid items for the conscientiousness personality scale.In this study, the data analysis test used the normality test, linearity test, and descriptive statistics consisting of demographic data, descriptive data, and crosstabs.Then a hypothesis test was carried out using the product moment correlation technique.

Finding
Before the hypothesis analysis was carried out, the researcher first tested the research data using the normality test, linearity test, and descriptive statistics.The normality test aims to test whether the distribution of the values in the research variables is normal.The normality test was carried out with the residual value of each variable using a Monte Carlo approach with the help of IBM SPSS version 24.The criterion for determining the normality test is that if the significance (sig.) is more than 0.05, then the data is normally distributed.Based on the normality test that has been carried out, it is found that the value of Monte Carlo Sig.(2-tailed) of 0.163, where the value obtained is more than 0.05 (p> 0.05), so it can be concluded that the significance value is normally distributed.
The linearity test was carried out to determine whether the relationship between 2 variables in a study is linear.In each existing variable, it can be assumed that there will be a relationship if the significance value on the deviation from linearity is above 0.05 (p > 0.05).The results of the linearity test showed a p-value (deviation from linearity) of 0.075 (p>0.05).The results of this test indicate that there is a linear relationship between the two variables.
Descriptive statistics provide an overview of participant demographics and group participants based on the scores obtained, which will be categorized later.Demographic data with 200 respondents details describe in Table 1.
Descriptive data determines the category from high to low measurement of each variable.The research uses five categories, from very high to very low, based on the mean value and the standard deviation (SD) (Azwar, 2017).The mean value for the academic stress variable is 76.07, and the mean value for the conscientiousness personality variable is 33.46.The standard deviation (SD) value for the academic stress variable is 8.26, and the standard deviation (SD) value for the conscientiousness personality variable is 5.1.The mean and standard deviation values were obtained into five categories: very high, high, medium, low, and very low.Various categories of data descriptions can provide an overview of the condition of a group of subjects in a measurement that serves as a source of information about the condition of the subjects in the variables studied.
The results of the categorization of the description data found that the majority of subjects showed academic stress in the moderate category (56.5%) with very high (3.5%) and very low (8%) categories.The majority of conscientiousness personality levels are in the moderate category (42.5%), with very high (6.5%) and very low (6%) categories.Furthermore, the researchers conducted a cross tab to explain the description of academic stress with conscientiousness personality in each respondent's demographic data.Crosstab result data can be seen in Table 2 and Table 3.
Based on Table 2, most female and male subjects showed academic stress in the moderate category, 55.4%, and 59.6%.The majority of subjects aged 19 years showed the majority of academic stress in the low and moderate categories (42.9%), 20 years old in the moderate (58.6%) and low (17.1%),21-year-olds in the moderate (50 .8%)and high (21.3%),22years old in the moderate (59.5%) and high (28.6%),23 years old in the moderate (66.6%) and 24 years old in the moderate (100%).
The majority of the 6th-semester respondents showed the majority of academic stress in the moderate (54.1%) and low (18.9%), and then in the 8th semester, the majority were in the moderate (57.9%) and high (26.2%).The majority of management study program respondents showed moderate (56.1%) and high (24.4%)academic stress, and accounting study program subjects in moderate (57.1%) and high (18.2%)categories.
Based on Table 3, most female and male respondents were in the moderate (41.9%) conscientiousness personality category.Male respondents showed moderate (44.2%) and low (25%).The majority of subjects aged 19 years showed conscientiousness personality in the moderate (42.8%), 20 years old in the moderate (43.9%) and low (24.4%),21 years in the moderate category (47.5%), 22 years old in the moderate (38.1%) and low (26.2%)categories, 23 years old in the moderate (50%), and 24 years old in the very high category (100%).The majority of 6th-semester showed conscientiousness personalities in the moderate (39.2%) and high (24.3%)categories, and most of the 8th-semester respondents were in the moderate (44.4%) and low (23.8%)categories.The majority of respondents from the management study program showed conscientiousness in the moderate (42.3%) and low (7.6%) categories, while respondents from the accounting study program were in the moderate (42.9%) and high (29.9%).
Test the hypothesis of both variables using product moment statistics to determine the relationship between two variables, namely academic stress and conscientiousness personality, with IBM SPSS version 24 tools.Table 4 shows the results of hypothesis testing for the two variables using product moment statistics.The results show a coefficient r = -0.365(p=0.000).The significance value is 0.000 <0.01, meaning a significant relationship exists between personality conscientiousness and academic stress.The negative direction of the coefficient means that there is an opposite relationship direction, meaning that the higher the conscientiousness personality, the lower the academic stress will be experienced, and the lower the conscientiousness personality, the higher the academic stress will be.

Discussion
Stress is an internal state caused by physical demands from the body or environmental and social conditions considered potentially dangerous.Academic stress is a stimulus that students assess as a discrepancy between expectations and reality, whereas academic stress is a psychological reaction to academic demands and burdens on student life (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).Because stress is an internal state, every individual has to deal with it.Personality has a significant relation to students academic stress (Bedi & Nayyar, (2022).One's personality is one of the essential factors in dealing with stressful situations (Jacob, et al., 2022).
One of the factors found to correlate with academic stress is conscientiousness personality.The research hypothesis test results found that the two variables' correlation value was r = -0.365(p=0.000).It indicates a significant relationship between conscientiousness personality and academic stress in the Faculty of Economics and Business at a University students.The correlation value r = -0.365indicates a negative direction of the coefficient between variables.A negative correlation means that the higher the conscientiousness personality, the lower the academic stress experienced; the lower the conscientiousness personality, the higher the academic stress experienced.
The results of this study were in line with Alderson (2023), who argue that students who exhibit strong levels of conscientiousness are prone to participating in responsible behaviors and embracing strategies that contribute to their success in academic coursework, so that they are better prepared to face pressures that arise from the process of compiling a thesis.Strong conscientiousness personality in students will describe as well as a student as disciplined, careful, hardworking, thorough, punctual, order, and neat behavior during thesis preparation.They have a solid willingness to face difficulties while working on the thesis and make it a person who can be independent in completing the thesis because of the attitude responsible for solving problems.Research conducted by Galindo-Domínguez & Bezanilla (2021) also there are negative relationship between conscientiousness and stress experienced by student, which means that students who are conscientious are more likely to perceive a stressful event as positive challange compared to those who lack these characteristics.Costa and McCrae (2008) suggest that conscientiousness personality has six indicators that describe the strong character that make them a good personality and work attitude.Their competence makes the person confident in demonstrating a rational nature and believing that they have high competence, so they work efficiently in completing tasks (Syamsidar et al., 2021).They are also well organized and like neatness.Therefore conscientiousness is a reliable indicator of doing well academically (Kertechian, 2018).Their compliance shows a sense of obligation and willingness to follow existing rules.Students possessing a high level of dutifulness exhibit a strong determination and enduring perseverance in pursuing their goals (Jadid, 2021).They also desire achievement, want to be recognized as successful, and tend to work hard to achieve excellence (Djula, 2021).Besides, they have self-discipline and tend to stick with disliked or complex tasks until they finish them.They desire perfection in the various things they do for achievement and have the high discipline to achieve their goals (self-discipline) (Nurcahyo et al., 2018).Furthermore, their deliberation makes them prefer to think carefully before acting by making plans at the beginning rather than suddenly to avoid making wrong decisions (Feist, et al., 2017).
With conscientiousness, individuals have the awareness and sincerity to carry out assignments, complete assignments with responsibility, and have a sense of order and obedience to students.The conscientiousness personality possessed by an individual will lead to a reliable personality and a desire to pursue the goals students want to achieve.
Based on the crosstab data, the results show that academic stress in female and male students tends to be high.However, there is no very high category for male students, unlike female students with a very high category.It describes that female students tend to have higher academic stress than males.Based on academic stress data with age, the results show that students aged 19 and 20 tend to have low academic stress.On the other hand, 21 and 22 yearsold students tend to have high academic stress.At students with the age of 23 and 24, they tend to have moderate categories.In line with this result, the academic stress level of 6th-semester students tends to be low, while 8th-semester students tend to have high academic stress.So, it describes that the higher the semester or age, the higher the students' academic stress.The level of academic stress among management study program students tended to be high.However, in the accounting study program, students had low academic stress tendencies.It can be known that different study programs may bring up a different level of academic stress.
Based on the results of the conscientiousness personality crosstab data with gender, female students tended to have a high or strong conscientiousness personality, while male students tended to have low or weak conscientiousness personalities.Based on age, conscientiousness personality at 19, 21, and 24 years-old students tend to be stronger than the age of 20, 22, and 23 students.The finding is that no pattern of age that described.It is possible because the strong and weak conscientiousness personalities do not depend on age.Moreover, the students' conscientiousness personality possessed by 6th-semester students tends to be high.
Conversely, 8th-semester students tend to be low.So, in this study, the conscientiousness personality of 6th-semester students is stronger than 8th-semester students.The level of conscientiousness personality in management study program students has a low tendency.In contrast, accounting study program students have a high conscientiousness personality tendency.
There are some limitations of this research.The research population is only specific to one faculty and is only specific to students who are preparing a thesis.Thus, further researchers can research in other faculties or enlarge the area of research not only focusing on students who are preparing their thesis but expanding to the different characteristics of respondents such as students of high schools and postgraduate degree, even for the employee's stress.
The results of this study have answered the problems of this preliminary study that students of the Faculty of Economics and Business feel inferior to the thesis that they work.They must be responsible for fulfilling their parents' expectations; however, they also feel pressured to finish the thesis as soon as possible.Through this research, it can be concluded that conscientiousness can reduce academic stress when compiling a thesis for students who are preparing a thesis.So, these findings can be a reference for lecturers and faculties to develop conscientiousness in students who work on the thesis.Hence, they are hopefully ready to face the processes of preparing a thesis and not cause academic stress on students.
The researcher's suggestion for lecturers is to strive to provide direction and input to students unfamiliar with conscientiousness so they can develop conscientiousness.These efforts can be carried out in ways such as holding psychoeducation programs for writing a thesis, one of which is developing the conscientiousness personality, and holding seminars even counseling for students on developing the conscientiousness personality before preparing a thesis.As for students, they are suggested to develop a conscientious personality on themselves.

Conclusion
As a result, this study finds a relationship between conscientiousness personality and academic stress in students of the Faculty of Economics and Business preparing their thesis at a University.The relationship between the two variables has a negative coefficient value indicating the opposite direction of the relationship, meaning that the higher the conscientiousness personality possessed, the lower the academic stress conditions that will be experienced, as well as the lower the conscientiousness personality possessed, the higher the academic stress conditions experienced.