Abstract
AbstractStress is concomitant with students’ life and can have a significant impact on their lives, and even how they go about their academic work. Globally, in every five visits by patients to the doctor, three are stress-related problems. This study examined stress and its impact on the academic and social life among students of a university in Ghana. The descriptive cross-sectional survey design was employed. Using the stratified and simple random (random numbers) sampling methods, 500 regular undergraduate students were engaged in the study. A questionnaire made up of Perceived Stress Scale and Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale was used to gather data for the study. Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), with AMOS were used for the analyses. It was found that majority of the students were moderately stressed. Paramount among the stressors were academic stressors, followed by institutional stressors, and external stressors. Stress had a significant positive impact on the academic and social life of students. It was concluded that undergraduate students, in one way or the other, go through some kind of stress during the course of their study. It was recommended that the university, through its Students’ Affairs, and Counselling Sections, continue to empower students on how to manage and deal with stress in order to enhance their academic life.
Highlights
Stress is one of the unpleasant phenomena associated with the lives of humans
Respondents who had total stress scores from 10-23 were considered as having low stress level, 24-36 were considered as having moderate stress level, whereas scores from 37-50 depicted high levels of stress (Cohen et al, 1983)
The results indicated that the majority of the respondents (93.4%) were moderately stressed, 6% were highly stressed, whereas few (3%) had a low level of stress
Summary
Stress is one of the unpleasant phenomena associated with the lives of humans. Several authors have defined the concept of stress in diverse ways (Jones, 1990; Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Malach-Pines & Keinan, 2007; Selye, 1974; Stein & Cutler, 2002). Malach-Pines and Keinan (2007) indicated that stress is the insight of incompatibility between a person’s ability to fulfil the burden from the environment This implies that there is always an environmental or social demand which has to be fulfilled based on a persons’ ability. The PSS was developed by Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983), while the SLSS was developed by Huebner (1991) The former is a self-report measure of stress with 10 items on a 5-point Likert-type scale which was used to measure the stress levels of students. The latter is a 7-item on a 5-point Likert scale which was used to measure the quality of students’ academic and social life.
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