Psychological distress among university students.

Abstract

We have read with some surprise the response (1) to ourpaper titled “Psychological distress among students from fiveuniversities” (2). The criticism levelled at the paper is largelyunfounded and is a gross misinterpretation of the basic statis-tics applied.The letter alleges that our Table 1 is misleading. Thewriters assume that the percentage in cell one of distressedmales in the university sample (42.1%) is derived by divid-ing distressed males in the university sample by the totallydistressed in both samples. Such a percentage should be ar-rived at by dividing distressed males in the university sample(72) by the total number of males in the same sample (171);which is exactly what we have done. The writers go on toclaim that the female percentages are completely wrong. Asin the previous instance the number of distressed femaleswere divided by the total number of fe males in the respec-tive samples. Thus our table is not erroneous in any way.Their statistics which follow, based on their assumed per-centages are baseless. Our statistical interpretation of Table1 remains valid and the differences in distress are of signifi-cance.The writers challenge the dichotomising of GeneralHealth Questionnaire (GHQ) scores into distressed and non-distressed categories based on a cutoff score. However, theycontradict themselves by stating that the GHQ is a screeningquestionnaire. A screening questionnaire by its very nature isdesigned to identify at risk popula tions. The use of the GHQ inthis sense is widely accepted (3,4).With regard to sampling, the controls were age and sexmatched, were of GCE (O/L) or higher education, and em-ployed, awaiting employment or following non-universitycourses or training programmes. They were selected at ran-dom from the towns where the universities included in thestudy were situated. This has been inadvertantly omitted fromthe paper. We were unable to arrive at a sample size as preva-lence of psychological distress among uni versity studentshas not been estimated previously. This was the very reasonwe carried out this pilot study and it has raised interestingissues worthy of further investigation.In future it would be prudent for the editors to entertaina critique of a paper along with the authors’ reply in the sameissue to enable readers to judge for themselves the meritsand demerits of an article.