2025 Volume 28 Issue 1 Pages 97-106
[Purpose]
School maladjustment is not seen as a condition but rather as a process of adjustment. High school and university students may differ in their maladjustment avoidance styles, and how individuals perceive these changes in adjustment may influence their own sense of adjustment. Therefore, the present study aimed to clarify the relationship between changes in school maladaptive behavior and stress-related growth from high school to university. To that end, it used a retrospective questionnaire to compare participants’ perceptions of stress-related growth during high school with their perceptions during university.
[Methods]
An online survey was administered to 530 university students. It measured maladjustment in their second year of high school, social support, rolefulness, stress-related growth, and school maladjustment during university.
[Results]
Latent profile analysis was used for classification, and five classes were identified. A comparison of stress-related growth scores for each class revealed that the group with the second lowest maladjustment scores for high school and university and high social support and rolefulness had the highest stress-related growth scores, whereas the group with the lowest maladjustment scores for high school and university and low social support and rolefulness had the lowest scores.
[Discussion/Conclusion]
These results suggest that feeling less maladjusted after high school does not necessarily indicate stress-related growth and that social support and rolefulness are related to stress-related growth. Additionally, the group that felt less maladjusted and appeared to be adapting had the lowest stress-related growth scores, suggesting that not currently feeling maladjusted does not mean that support is unnecessary. These findings are relevant to the discussion around providing support by universities and other institutions of higher education.
