Coping skills among university students are very essential to ensure success in academics. Hence, the aim of the study is to identify the type of coping skills employed by low academic achievers among university students. This study is conducted in three stages; the first stage involves applications of qualitative methodology with documents analysis technique. The purpose of documents analysis is to determine the factors that contribute to the use of coping skills by low achievers. The second stage involves the application of quantitative methodology using Sidek Personality Questionnaire (Sidek Mohd Noah,1998) to examine the personality traits of the 126 male and female subjects. The findings of this study identify the five dominant personality traits among the 126 subjects: (i) helping (M = 74.76), (ii) self criticism (M = 74.76), (iii) introvert (M = 73.65), (iv) dependence (M = 71.80) and structural (M = 71.26). Less dominant traits among the subjects are aggresive (M = 52.06), analytical (M = 52.06), autonomy (M = 57.86), extrovert (M = 59.36), intellectual (M = 60.95), variety (M = 60.95), resilient (M = 51.19), supportive (M = 60.54) and achievement (M = 54.91). A few insignificant traits such as; self control (M = 49.84) and dishonest (M = 30.39) were also found. Multivariate Analysis of Varience (MANOVA) is conducted to determine the score differences of each significant personality traits based on their demographic characteristics. MANOVA findings show significant means score differences among male and female students particularly for complex and resilient traits. On the other hand, when it was based on their probationary status, the significant traits were dependency, supportive and achievement traits. However, when it was based on the year of study, traits such as analytical, dependant, extrovert, intellectual, supportive and achievement were significant.
In the final stage, structured interviews and open interviews were conducted, where three male and three female subjects were randomly selected from the sample of 126 subjects. Findings indicated that four factors significantly contributed to the coping skills in the academic environment that resulted in the low academic performance for all the six subjects. The four factors were psychology, economy, social and education. The psychological factor seemed to lead to emotional disturbance and continuous stress among all the six subjects. This accentuated their negative personality traits and low self-esteem. Subsequently, they began to use coping skills that were very much emotion-focused that did not help them in overcoming their problems. The economic factors seemed to influence the positive and negative attitudes of all the subjects. Two of the six subjects used problem-focused coping skills, whereas the other four used the emotion-focused coping skills when they are faced with economic difficulties. The social factor too seemed to influence the self-motivation of the subjects. One of the subjects was found to be without social support from someone significant or important to him. The final factor, education, influenced effective learning skills as well as their soft skills. As such, all the subjects were dominated by negative behaviours, which led to the use of emotion-focused coping skills when they were faced with difficulties or problems in their studies. In conclusion, the study found that the internal factor, i.e. psychology and external factor.