Educational stress and coping strategies in school going adolescents

Abstract

Background: Academic pressure are one of the main causes of stress for young people and this stress is a significant catalyst and precursor to depression. This research uses to assist the teaching units in understanding the related problems of stress of students of modern teaching technology, thereby proceeding to provide assistance and preventive measures. Current study was aimed to find out prevalence of educational stress among school going adolescents and associated factors. In addition to study the use of stress coping strategies.Methods: It was Cross-sectional study carried out during 2016-2017 at Government and Private Schools of Gwalior. 1400 students were selected randomly. Prepared questionnaire in Hindi and English language adapted from. Educational Stress Scale for Adolescent (ESSA) and Academic Stress Scale (ASC). Scales are modified according to our settings.Results: We found that 43% children have minimal stress, 56.6% moderate stress, 0.4% have highly stress. Female adolescents have more stress than male. 63% adolescents of government school have moderate stress as compared to private school which has 50.9% moderate stress. 11th and 12th standard students have more stress than 9th and 10th standard which is highly significant (p value <0.01). 20.4% adolescents use occasionally coping and 55.3% adolescents used sometimes coping and 23.5% used frequently coping strategies.Conclusions: The present study reveals that the school going adolescents are having educational stress and which is affected by age, gender, socioeconomic status, examinations, parents expectation and peer and also found that adolescents uses different coping strategies to cope up with educational stress.