The Differences in Coping with Stress Between Male and Female High School Students in Mathematics Learning

The phenomenon of students experiencing stress in learning mathematics is commonplace in this era of globalization. It is not uncommon for students to feel afraid when facing material or assignments presented by teachers at school. Therefore, this research aims to identify stress-coping strategies used by high school students in dealing with mathematics learning based on gender. This research uses descriptive quantitative methods. Data was obtained through a questionnaire containing 46 statement items, then distributed via Google Forms and statement sheets to students. The research respondents consisted of 89 students from tenth graders in one of the high schools in Tambun Selatan, Bekasi, West Java. Data analysis was carried out using the stress-coping percentage method. The research results show that both male and female students tend to use emotion-centered coping strategies, with a percentage of male respondents was 57% and female respondents had a percentage of 79%. Also, the coping strategy section that focuses on emotions tends more towards the sub-indicator of accepting responsibility with a percentage of 76% for male students and 78% for female students. It can be said that there is no difference between male and female students in solving a problem.


Introduction
Mastery of mathematical concepts is the main goal in the mathematics learning process.If a student cannot master basic mathematical calculations, it will be difficult for him to understand more complex concepts at a higher level (Hastuti & Yoenanto, 2018).Students should realize that the main characteristics of understanding mathematics are the ability to think logically, use rational reasoning, and be careful (Ginanjar, 2019).This is what causes students not to feel interested, namely because of the abstract nature of the material which is full of numbers, formulas, and requires practice.
Apart from that, the use of conventional approaches by teachers in delivering material is still generally carried out.What should play an important role in making the mathematics learning process more enjoyable, but instead feels monotonous and less interesting (Juliyanti & Pujiastuti, 2020).Also in the learning process, there is a lack of encouragement to develop students' thinking abilities.Many students still show a lack of active involvement in the learning process (Ahmad, 2016).The impact of this is children's lack of ability when faced with applicable questions or questions that are different from the usual exercises they do.As a result, they often make mistakes and experience difficulties, even experiencing stress when studying (Kesumawati, 2008).
According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), learning stress arises when there is an imbalance between the demands given and the abilities possessed.In other words, the stress felt by gifted students can be attributed to an imbalance between their demands and abilities (Azmy et al., 2017).The use of the term stress at that time was still not systematically organized.Additionally, a stress source refers to an event or condition that exceeds the mental or physical capacity to deal with the stress source (Gaol, 2016).Stress is Unnes J. Math.Educ.2024, Vol. 13, No. 2, 124-132 also a psychological reaction in the form of emotional changes and can be triggered by various types of stressors.Each individual's psychological reaction to stressors is different and has varying impacts (Simamora & Rahma, 2022).
Stress can be experienced by every individual, regardless of gender, age, experience, and so on.Women often experience stress, although it does not rule out the possibility that men experience the same thing too.In a study conducted by Dewantoro & Rachmawati (2020), it was revealed that women often feel more pressured by academic workload and tend to be more anxious about their learning outcomes compared to men.This is most likely due to the high social expectations for women's academic achievement and the dual responsibilities they often face, such as taking care of the house and studying.This is also in line with research published in the journal PLOS ONE showing that female students report higher levels of stress overall and use emotion-based coping strategies more often compared to male students.The study found significant differences in the levels of stress reported by female and male students, with females showing higher levels of stress especially at the end of the semester (Graves et al., 2021) Waitz et al. (1983) physical signs in someone experiencing stress include manifestations such as disturbances in heart function, increased blood pressure, muscle tension, headaches, cold sensations in the hands or feet, shortness of breath, dizziness, and feelings of nausea in the stomach, disorders of the digestive system, difficulty sleeping, disorders of the menstrual cycle for women, and sexual problems such as impotence (Sukadiyanto, 2010).According to Hussain et al., (2008) also, signs of children experiencing stress include emotional inadequacy, aggressive behavior, feelings of shyness, social phobia, and often a loss of interest in activities that are usually enjoyable for them.
Stress can be triggered by various factors, both within and outside.Internal factors, such as an individual's mindset, play an important role.A person who feels unable to control a situation often experiences higher stress levels.Conversely, the more control a person has over a situation, the less likely they are to experience stress, especially students.Besides internal factors, external factors also considerably influence a person's stress level.Examples include demands to achieve high results, encouragement for achievement, and competition between parents to make their children proud (Barseli et al., 2017) Of the many factors that exist, the level of stress in learning is a big concern for teachers regarding their students' mathematics learning process.However, this can still be overcome in various ways, such as being involved in how the individual feels about the situation and the extent to which he or she has the selfconfidence to overcome it (Winarso, 2014).Methods or strategies can be applied to overcome stress problems apart from beliefs, namely stress coping strategies.This is in line with the findings of research conducted by Hariadi & Gondohanindijo (2021) Contains one way of dealing with learning stress with coping strategies.
According to Sarafino (1998), coping is a way that humans use to overcome feelings when there is an imbalance between the demands they receive and their abilities.This situation is then considered to trigger stress (Septiningsih & Na'imah, 2012).According to Lazarus & Folkman (1984), they group coping strategies into two categories: a) Emotionally focused coping refers to an individual's efforts to control stress responses related to emotional aspects.This includes positive appraisal, responsibility, self-control, maintaining boundaries, and withdrawal or avoiding problems.Meanwhile, coping focuses on problems, referring to individual efforts to find new methods of dealing with problems that cause stress.This involves planned problem-solving, confronting problems, and seeking social support related to efforts to obtain emotional support, information, or help from others (Zulaikha, 2021) Based on the background, a way to overcome student stress in learning mathematics has been mentioned by implementing coping strategies.This research focuses on differences in coping strategies between men and women when facing the stress of learning mathematics.Many studies say that men are more likely to deal with problems that focus on problems, while women tend to be more emotional.This is based on one of the previous studies conducted by Matud (2004).The study "Gender Differences in Stress and Coping Styles" explains the differences in the way men and women experience and deal with stress.This research shows that men and women tend to choose different coping strategies in dealing with stress.Men more often use strategies that are centred on solutions or solving problems.At the same time, women are more likely to use strategies that focus more on emotional aspects and seek social support.
Unnes J. Math.Educ.2024, Vol. 13, No. 2, 124-132 Apart from that, reviewing previous research from Hendra et al. (2022) discusses coping strategies for stress in general learning contexts for high school students, as well as research conducted by Andarini et al. (2020) discusses stress coping used with students during online learning and also in research Dela et al., (2019) discussing guidance and counselling students who use stress coping in preparing their thesis.From several of the articles mentioned, it can be seen that research related to stress-coping strategies is discussed in the general learning domain carried out by students and students.
However, the researcher examined stress coping strategies centered on learning mathematics to analyze what high school students often use coping strategies and whether there are differences between boys and girls in one of the Bekasi City schools.With this research, teachers can learn more about teaching methods or approaches that are better used when teaching or can be used as reference material in the future.Moreover, teachers can focus on students' psychological problems before implementing teaching methods.

Methods
The method applied in this research was descriptive quantitative, a form of survey research that aims to produce general data Hardani et al. (2020).This research began by preparing an instrument questionnaire consisting of 51 statement items.This statement is made in an adapted form from the journal (Folkman, 1985).This questionnaire was designed using a Likert scale assessment format.And there are 4 choice items to answer the statement.The 4 choice items are assigned to each, scoring from the high or low level of an answer choice to the statement.Because this research aims to identify the coping strategies most commonly used by students and the differences between men and women when stressed in learning mathematics, the validation instrument questionnaire sheet was validated by 2 experts, namely a Psychology Lecturer and a University Counseling Guidance Lecturer.Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Hamka.From the validation results, there were several revisions, such as changing words, sentences, and statement points, that were easier to understand.After the revisions from experts had been corrected, the validation instrument questionnaire was tested on students.The students tested were Bina Dharma High School class XI students, totalling 33 students.The purpose of the validity test on students is to determine whether the instrument questionnaire sheet is suitable for research.After getting the results from the validity test on students, data processing was carried out using Winstep software.At this stage, filtering is carried out for the statements in the instrument questionnaire.

Based on Type of Coping Strategy
This research, conducted at SMAN 3 Tambun Selatan, had as many respondents as 89 students.Taken in three classes in class X. 2 genders can be grouped, namely male and female.Based on the calculation results via Microsoft Excel 2112, the following results are obtained: Table 3 above illustrates that there were more female respondents than male respondents.The number of female respondents was 52 students, with a percentage of 58%, while the number of male respondents was 37 students, with a percentage of 42%.
After knowing the number and percentage of each respondent.Furthermore, based on gender differences, namely men and women, when using coping strategies, the following results were obtained:  4 describes the types of strategies for overcoming problems used by men and women in class X at SMAN 3 Tambun Selatan.There were 12 male respondents with a percentage of 32% who used problemcentered coping strategies, while those who tended to focus on emotions were much greater, namely 21 students with a percentage of 57%.Also, there were 4 respondents with a percentage of 11% who used both types of coping strategies.In further explanation, there were 10 female respondents with a percentage of 19% who used problem-focused coping strategies, 41 respondents with a percentage of 79% who used emotion-focused coping strategies, and 1 female respondent who used both types of coping.Researchers also illustrated in the form of a circle diagram the students' coping strategies based on gender.
Figure 1 and Figure 2 present pie charts containing the percentage of male and female students who used problem-centered, emotion-centered, and both strategies.In Figure 1, there are 32% of male students who use Problem Focused-coping (PFC), while the use of Emotion Focused-coping (EFC) is more significant at 57%, and those who use both (PFC & EFC) are only 11%.In Figure 2, female students can be seen that who used Problem Focused-coping (PFC) only 19%, while those who used Emotion Focusedcoping (EFC) 79%, and those who used both (PFC & EFC) were only 2%.In this pie chart, it can be seen that the use of emotion-focused coping strategies is more dominant among both genders, both male and female.However, the number of percentages is superior in female respondents compared to male.Based on what was found in this study, this is in line with Rinawati & Darisman (2020) research, which shows that online learning causes students to feel bored, with 45% of students experiencing low boredom and 55% of students experiencing moderate boredom.Research Kartika (2020) revealed that during online learning, high school students feel anxiety which is influenced by four factors: 1) internal factors, with an anxiety level of 74.53%, which is in the moderate category; 2) family factors with an anxiety level of 52.17% which is also in the moderate category, 3) social factors with an anxiety level of 52.80% which is in the low category, and 4) institutional factors with an anxiety level of 85.09% which is in the moderate category.Boredom, anxiety, stress, and other psychological feelings of students cause male and female students to use emotion-centered coping strategies.They focus on what they feel, as well as how to overcome it.

Female EFC 79%
Female PFC&EFC 2% Oktarisa & Yusra (2015) research investigated differences in academic achievement based on stress coping and gender in university students.Of the 121 subjects, 17 male students and 19 female students used problem-focused coping, while 18 male students and 67 female students used emotion-focused coping.These results are in line with (DJ, 2016) which found that 93.3% of female students and 52% of male students in class X at SMK Swadipha 2 Natar used emotion-focused coping.In contrast, 48% of male students and 6.7% of female students used problem-focused coping.However, (Thahir, 2014) research found no difference in stress coping mechanisms between male and female students.An example of problem-focused coping is traders analyzing market problems to overcome them, while emotion-focused coping is looking for a new spirit or surrendering to market problems.According to Hamilton andFagot (1988) in (Rahman et al., 2019), men tend to use problem-focused coping because they rely more on logic and are less emotional, while women tend to use emotion-focused coping because they are more emotional and rarely use logic.White E (1999) in (Rahman et al., 2019) also state that differences in coping mechanisms between men and women are caused by physiological factors, where women are more likely to use emotion-focused coping and men problem-focused coping.
Individuals facing stress will attempt to perform coping behaviors.In daily life, students often face stressful situations, such as online learning.In this situation, students try to cope with problems by finding solutions when facing online learning.Coping strategies used by students can be influenced by culture, environment, experience, and knowledge (Gunawan, 2018).Therefore, stress coping strategies in students during online learning are very important because coping strategies carried out by individuals have a positive impact on the ability to overcome academic stress (Sumantyo, 2020).
This research can contribute to education, especially students who experience stress can choose coping strategies that suit them, and educators can evaluate learning strategies that understand student conditions in order to achieve the desired learning goals.In addition, coping strategies can be carried out by teachers before teaching in class.Before plunging into so much material, the teacher must recognize the learning problems that exist in these students, such as the emphasis or use of student strategic coping when solving problems in math problems.Even for understanding math material the student understands it in what way.Therefore, when the teacher knows this, then the selection of learning methods or strategies will be more directed.Table 6 presents each sub-indicator of coping strategies based on gender.Problem-centered coping strategies are divided into 3 parts, namely planful problem-solving, seeking social support, and conflictive coping.Of the three sub-indicators, the one used most by students is planful problem solving, with a percentage of 70% for male students and 71% for female students.In other words, students who are more likely to use problem-focused coping strategies try to solve problems with a structured approach, involving Unnes J. Math.Educ.2024, Vol. 13, No. 2, 124-132 concrete actions to change the situation and using analytical thinking in solving problems.(Maryam, 2017).Furthermore, the coping strategy section that focuses on emotions tends to be more towards the accepting responsibility sub-indicator, with a percentage of 76% for male students and 78% for female students.In other words, students who predominantly use emotion-centered coping strategies overcome a problem by accepting and facing existing problems while looking for solutions to overcome them (Putri & Kushartati, 2015).

Conclusion
Based on the results and discussion of this study, it appears that the coping strategy most widely used by students of SMAN 3 Tambun Selatan is emotion-focused coping, both for male and female students.The percentage of male respondents is 57%, and female respondents have a percentage of 79%.In other words, students try to overcome problems by finding solutions to problems by focusing on the emotional realm.In addition, many things influence students when choosing coping strategies focused on emotions, it can be in the environmental or social realm, culture, experience, knowledge, and even daily habits.Also, it can be seen based on the type of sub-indicators of coping strategies that both genders tend to use emotion-centered coping for the part of accepting responsibility or overcoming problems by accepting and dealing with them while looking for other ways to overcome them.

Table 1 .
Questionnaire Assessment Score

Table 4 .
Coping Strategies Based on Gender

Table 6 .
Coping Strategy Sub-Indicator Score