Emotionally Expressive Language in Writing and Its Relations to Graduate Students' Stress Levels and GPA

Students' academic performance and health may be related to the coping strategies they employ while negotiating the demands of college life, an association anticipated by Pennebaker's inhibition-confrontation theory. Yet this association has only been examined among traditional college students, typically undergraduates. In this cross-sectional study, the relationships between the amount of emotions expressed in a single written essay, stress level, and GPA were examined among a sample of online graduate students ( N = 116). Also examined was whether social and academic integrations, as measured by the Institutional Integration Scales (IIS), moderated the relationship between emotional expression and GPA. Based on analyses from the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, results showed an unexpected positive correlation between amount of negative emotional words disclosed in writing and GPA. Program level and Academic and Intellectual Development; a subscale of IIS, also correlated with GPA. None of the moderation analyses were significant. The findings showed that the students who earned the highest GPA were also those who wrote the most about negative feelings about their past traumatic event. These findings are not compatible with Pennebaker's inhibition-confrontation theory or with positive psychology theories. Future studies may determine whether these conflicting findings are the results of the methodology used in the present study, or whether the theories on which the study was based need further revision. The study contributes to the literature on student success and expands it by focusing on the growing population of online graduate students; it may also aid faculty and administrators to better understand factors associated with student academic success. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone(800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]