A Case Report of Danish Students’ Wellbeing and Stress in a Time of Crisis and Recoveries

Abstract

This article examines Danish students’ wellbeing, distinguishing between emotional, social, and academic wellbeing and between different types of stressors, understood as factors that can respectively induce and mitigate the risk of stress. An exploratory factor analyses on data from Danish students in December 2022 empirically confirm the three dimensions of wellbeing and identify two stressor factors (anxiety and security). The article illustrates how the wellbeing and stressor factors can be used in a cluster analysis to identify and clarify students at risk. In a cross-sectional perspective focusing on December 2022, the article identifies six clusters of Danish students with different levels of wellbeing and stressors. The students in the different clusters have varying characteristics with regard to the five factors (three wellbeing and two stressors) and thus also to what degree they each suffer. By applying The Stress Framework, we characterize the different clusters as a cluster with no stress (20% of the students), a cluster with positive-to-tolerable stress (20% of the students), a cluster with tolerable stress (23% of the students), a cluster with tolerable-to-toxic stress (16% of the students), and two clusters with toxic stress (9% and 12% of the students respectively). Finally, we discuss which of the clusters of students that are in risk of negative long-term educational consequences, and we suggest that it is important to implement mitigating initiatives aimed at students with characteristics as those in the identified clusters with tolerable-to-toxic and toxic stress.