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Jennifer
B. Garrett
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University
of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Undergraduate
Journal of Psychology, Volume 14, 2001. University of North Carolina At
Charlotte.
Department of Psychology. |
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| © The articles contained in this journal remain the property of the author(s). No part may be reproduced without express permission from the author(s), except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. | ||
| This study was a replication of earlier studies that have examined gender and college related stress. A questionnaire, consisting of 3 stress ratings, was given to 25 college students (16 females and 9 males). There were no significant gender differences found in any of the ratings. However, the females had a slightly higher average mean than the males. The results suggest that gender is not significantly related to college stress, which coincides with the hypothesis. | ||
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INTRODUCTION
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| Stress is fact
of life that every human deals with on a daily basis. It could appear sporadically, all of the sudden, or over a period of time. Even though everyone experiences stress, research has shown that college students, especially, have numerous stressors that effect their daily grind. Many factors come into play periodically such as preparing for and taking exams, peer events, homework, family and social relationships, role conflict, finances, future career plans, and a possible part-time job. Those are just a few of the sources that could possibly cause stress. |
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| Several variables also play a role in how and what causes a person to become stressed. Gender, age, life traumas or crises, psychological state, physical health, and social support are some of various potential variables that come into play when looking at and studying stress and its causes. | |
| Why College Students? | |
| Much research has been done on stress, and a portion of it has been conducted on college students in order to consider what specific factors contribute to perceived stress. This type of research is important because increased understanding of this topic would be helpful in the development of new coping tactics, stress management skills, stress preventative programs, and in the training of future educators and counselors. There will always be college students and they will always be stressed out about something, so any research in this area will prove to be essential information for the lives of students everywhere. | |
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FACTORS
RELATED TO STRESS
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| Many studies have looked at the sources of stress with regard to gender, ethnic groups, state of health, period in life, and environment. For instance, Frazier and Schauben studied stress-inducing factors that effected females the most and compared levels of stress between two different ethnic groups (1994). They discovered, by use of the Psychological Distress Inventory, that the top five sources of stress among female college students consisted of financial problems, test pressure, failing a test, being rejected by someone, and relationship breakups. The Asian American female students reported more psychological symptoms, such as depression and low self-esteem, than the European American students did. However, Ross, Niebling, and Heckert (1999) found drastically different top five, intrapersonal sources of stress among college students (both genders) by utilizing the Student Stress Survey. They found change in eating habits, change in sleeping habits, new responsibilities, heavier work load, and breaks to cause stress. Frazier and Schauban also conducted a study on stress between Asian Americans and European Americans (1994). Asian Americans ended up having a greater number of stressors and a higher degree of stress than did the European Americans. This result may reflect the impact of racism, difference in values, and the lack of use of available mental health services. According to Hudd, Dumlao, Erdmann-Sager, et al. (2000) stress is related to self esteem and health status. The result of their survey conducted study suggests that low levels of self-esteem bring about poor eating habits, which in turn, causes one stress. | |
| In 1998, Dill and Henley suggested that significant differences exist between how traditional and nontraditional students perceive stressors. They gathered matched pairs and then proceeded to perform a descriptive study. They found that nontraditional students experienced more family related stress due to their numerous roles as being older students. On the other hand, traditional students attributed most of their stress to peer and social activities related to college. | |
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MEASURE
OF STRESS
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| In 1999, Sarafino and Ewing decided that the current instruments for measuring stress were not adequate due to the fact that they did not view stress as transactional, nor did they contain specific measurements of stressor intensity or frequency. They addressed these problems by producing new items of student surveys. The outcome was named the Hassles Assessment Scale for Students in College. Sarafino and Ewing demonstrated this new stress scale to be reliable and valid when testing the frequency of hassles, the extent of pondering about hassles, and the unpleasantness of the hassles. This new scale should prove to be very useful in future stress research. | |
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COMMON TRENDS
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| In sum, previous research has looked at stress and college students with various scales and determinants, such as ethnicity and age. Although different variables and situations lead to distinct results, some commonalties can be pointed out. Common trends point out that college students frequently experience extreme amounts of stress, and have little time for outside networks and hobbies. The need for further research in order to help college students deal with stress is probably the most common thread that runs throughout past studies. | |
| With all the past research that has been done in regard to stress and college students, some gaps still remain to be studied. Frequent physical illnesses, such as reoccurring headaches, as a result of the constant stress that students deal with should be researched in order to determine the types of stressors that result in physical ailments (Hudd, Dumlao, Erdmann-Seger, et al.,2000). The largest gap within the literature is that none of these studies had equal participant representation. All of the studies consisted of far more women than men (even when comparing stress according to gender). The outcome of this is the inability to fully generalize the results to the population. | |
| An examination of stress in college student research has shown that there are common factors that students experience which cause them to become stressed. Therefore, the research suggests that stress and college students are related. Some research has found that ethnicity plays a role possibly due to racism or value differences, where other studies have proved that gender and state of health are related to stress. Even though this topic has been studied over the years, remaining gaps of knowledge still exist that need to be looked into. Finally, stress is a normal part of life. Preventative steps and counseling are needed only when the stress becomes excessive, problematic, or results in mental or physical problems. | |
| Since there has been a lack of studies providing equal representation when it comes to college students and stress, this study will focus particularly on that. The purpose of the present study is to determine if gender plays a role in college related stress. It is hypothesized that gender will not be significantly related to college stress. Even though women tend to be thought of as more “stress prone”, it is predicted that college life does not discriminate when it comes to stress. | |
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METHOD
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| Participants | |
| A total of 25 college students from the general psychology subject pool were recruited by voluntarily signing up for this study, in exchange they received extra credit. Being from the “general psychology subject pool” means that all the participants were currently enrolled in a general psychology lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Since the study was designed to measure gender differences, there was available sign up space for 7 males and 8 females in the first session, and 8 males and 7 females in the second session. Even though all the spaces were filled only 9 males and, surprisingly, 16 females showed up at the sessions. The students were given an identical questionnaire in order to assess their college related stress. | |
| Design and Materials | |
| The questionnaire used for this study was a compilation of two other surveys, “Are You Burned Out?” and “The Hassles Assessment Scale for Students in College” (Sarafino & Ewing, 1999). The newly formed questionnaire consisted of 13 questions related to college in some form. Each question had three parts: frequency, unpleasantness, and time dwelled. Frequency was defined as how often in the past month or so the event occurred. Unpleasantness was termed as how boring or displeasing the event was when it actually happened. Finally, dwelled was the extent to which one is usually bothered by each event when it was not actually present, before or after it occurred. All three aspects were rated on a likert-type scale ranging from 0-4, with 0 representing never and 4 representing always. Since the scores were rated 0-4, higher scores meant more stress. “Do you feel overwhelmed by your schoolwork?” is an example of the type of question that appeared on the survey. A general information section followed the directions. This was for the experimenters’ purpose of determining gender differences. The survey took approximately twenty minutes to complete. | |
| Procedure | |
| There were two sessions in order to try to get an equal number of sexes. However, the procedures were the same in both cases, even the designated room was the same in order to control for extraneous variables. | |
| The participants were first given a consent form to read and fill out, which gave information about the purpose of the experiment. Then the experimenter handed out the questionnaire to the students, and then proceeded to read the directions aloud to them. After making sure that everything was clear, the experimenter was sure to mention that some participants might experience slight anxiety due to the fact that the questions were stress related. Since the questionnaire was simple and moderately short, it took approximately twenty minutes or so to complete. The experimenter then handed out the extra credit slips and debriefed the participants by telling them the true nature of the experiment including the hypothesis, the variables, and repeated all guarantees of confidentiality. The participants were thanked again for their participation, and were free to leave. | |
| In the present study, the dependent variable is stress score on the questionnaire and the independent variable is gender (ex post facto). This is an independent groups design because the subjects were independent from one another and they were only tested once. | |
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RESULTS
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| The results were analyzed using three separate independent t-tests for each measure of stress. The scores from the questionnaire were not significantly different for males and females. However, the females did have a slightly higher mean than the males. See Table 1 for group means and standard deviations. There were no significant differences between genders for frequency, t(23)=-.468, p>.05, unpleasantness, t(23)=-.667, p>.05, or time dwelt, t(23)=-.315, p>.05. | |
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Table
1
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| Group Means and Standard Deviations for the Three Stress Ratings | ||||
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Gender
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Stress
Rating
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Males
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Females
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| Frequency | 23.44 (5.92) | 24.94 (10.02) | ||
| Unpleasantness | 21.11 (9.05) | 23.94 (10.71) | ||
| Time Dwelled | 18.89 (8.65) | 20.19 (10.48) | ||
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| Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. | ||||
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DISCUSSION
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| The results of the present study indicate that college related stress is not significantly related to gender, therefore the hypothesis was supported. However, females did have higher mean averages in all three stress measurements, which is consistent with Frazier and Schauben’s findings that females tend to stress more over college related events (1994). Other studies also coincide with the fact that college students, despite gender, deal with stress directly related to college. According to Dill and Henley, traditional students refer to college as being their main source of stress (1998). Despite this, the purpose of the study to attain an equal number of both genders was unsuccessful. This, in turn, altered the external validity of the study by hindering generalizability. | |
| Some extraneous variables were controlled for by giving all the participants the same questionnaire in the same room, the same time of day, and by the same person. Other possible extraneous variables such as age, race, and social status could not be controlled. However, the use of randomization distributed age quite evenly (most participants were 18 or 19 years old) as was the ethnicity of the participants (they were either Caucasian or African American). Possible threats or limitations to the internal validity of this study might have been participant personality traits such as determination or apathy, amount of sleep acquired the previous night, and there is always the possibility that the first batch of participants told the succeeding ones about the true purpose of the study, which might have affected how they responded. | |
| Understanding college related stress and how it affects students could be helpful information to counselors and in the creating of new stress coping and management skills. | |
| Society today regards females as being more stress prone than males, but college involves equal challenges and incentives for both sexes. An interesting idea for future research would be to examine gender differences between college related stress and general every-day life stress. Another topic of interest for future research might be to study different races to see if diverse backgrounds and cultures play a role in the area of college stress. |
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REFERENCES
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| Dill, L. P., & Henley, B. T. (1998). Stressors of college: A comparison of traditional and nontraditional students. | |
| The Journal of Psychology, 132(1), 25-31. | |
| Frazier, A. P., & Schauben, J. L. (1994). Stressful life events and psychological adjustment among female college students. | |
| Measurement & Evaluation in Counseling & Development, 27(1), 1-12. | |
| Hudd, S. S., Dumlao, J., Erdmann-Sager, D., Murray, D., Phan, E., Soukas, N., & Yokozuka, N. (2000). Stress at college: | |
| Effects on health habits, health status and self-esteem. College Student Journal, 34(2), 1-9. | |
| Ross, E. S., Niebling, C. B., Bradley, C., & Heckert, M. T. (1999). Sources of stress among college students. College | |
| Student Journal, 33(2), 1-5. | |
| Sarafino, P. E., & Ewing, M. (1999). The hassles assessment scale for students in college: Measuring the frequency and | |
| unpleasantness of and dwelling on stressful events. Journal of American College Health, 48(2), 1-18. | |
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| © | This article remains the property of the author. No part may be reproduced without express permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. |
| Additional information is available from the: Department of Psychology, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd. Charlotte, NC 28223-0001. (704) 687- 4731. | |
| Journal Editors:
Jane Gaultney, Ph.D. & Paul Foos, Ph.D. Layout and Design: Jodi Hankins Web Layout: Sue Spaulding |
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