A Qualitative Analysis of Computing Students' Professional Identity and its Relationship to Strategies for Coping with Stressors in the Computing Disciplines

In this qualitative study, undergraduate computing students from two mid-sized southeastern universities participated in focus groups to explore their (1) developing professional identities, (2) salient stressors within their computing education programs, and (3) coping strategies used to navigate these stressors. Students provided contextual evidence to support the formation of professional identity as it relates to the IT field. Examples of student stressors drawn from our analysis were demanding coursework, unbalanced life, long nights, feelings of lack of preparedness, and constantly changing technology. The dominant coping strategies employed by these computing students were (1) the problem-focused strategies of planning and realism and (2) the emotion-focused strategies of avoidance and comedic-displacement. Additional themes were discovered and are discussed.