The association between perceived health symptoms and academic stress in Spanish Higher Education students

Abstract

University life can be associated to mental and emotional pressure. The aim of this research was to explore if the perception of the academic context as stressful can be associated to health symptoms (physical and mental) in higher education students enrolled in different degrees. Method. 728 students were recruited from a Spanish university. An academic stressors questionnaire (E-CEA) and response to the stress questionnaire (R-CEA) were used to assess academic stress and health symptoms. We conducted a t-test, Pearson correlation test and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Results. Academic stress is moderate correlated to health symptoms (r≥.40 in all cases). Specifically, academic stress reported by students is positively associated to physical exhaustion (r=.533; p<.001), sleeping disorders (r=.429; p<.001), irascibility (r=.467; p<.001), negative thoughts (r=.558; p<.001) and feeling nervous (r= .474; p< .001). Significant differences in E-CEA and R-CEA were found for age and major (p≤0.001). We observed a model which accounted for 40.3% of the variance of health symptoms reported by students, being academic stress the strongest predictive variable. Conclusions. The results from this study support the assumption that academic stress has a negative impact on college students´ health.