The Effects of Perceived Stress and Facebook on Accounting Students’ Academic Performance

Abstract

This paper has three objectives. First, we investigate the effects of perceived stress on the academic performance of accounting students. Second, we examine the association of Facebook use with perceived stress. Third, we investigate the effect of Facebook usage on accounting students’ academic performance. To measure the perceived stress we used the Perceived Stress Scale developed in the prior research for the shorter version and used it to collect data from accounting students at two universities. We found that female accounting students reported higher stress scores than their male counterparts. In addition, the results indicated that this phenomenon affected their academic performance negatively. African American accounting students were more likely to report higher stress scores than their non-African American counterparts. Further investigation showed that African American students are more likely to live alone or to live in the dorm. They are also more likely to be working while going to school. Our analysis shows that higher Facebook use is associated with stress and the respondents in our sample, who used Facebook while studying, reported higher levels of stress and were less in control of things. Finally, our results show that accounting students who use Facebook while studying experienced lower academic performance after controlling for stress.