Factors Associated with Increased Perceived Stress Among College Students

Stress and Health Research Report
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Stress and Health Research Report
Introduction
With the increasing need to maximize the utility of economic investment in college education, there is a need to explore and address various factors that may undermine students’ performance. To this end, the mental health of contemporary student remains one of the topic of interest among researchers. Previous research shows that “Lower sleep quantity (amount of sleep) and quality (how well one sleeps) are related to poorer mental health and academic performance” (Galambos, Dalton & Mages, 2009, 2). In another study, researchers found that “students experiencing work-school conflict are likely to experience lower school satisfaction and performance, increased burnout, and lower overall psychological wellbeing” (Sprung & Rogers, 2021, 779)
The research question that will guide the current study is: What factors are associated with increased perceived stress among college students? The researcher hypothesized that students that work are more likely to report higher levels of perceived stress than those who do not work and the fewer hours of sleep that students receive per night increases the amount of stress perceived.
Method
A cross-sectional research survey was conducted to collect the data required to prove the researcher’s hypothesis. Data was collected from 299 college students using survey. In the first hypothesis, the employment status of the participants was a categorical variable describing whether one was employed or not. The variable was operationalized by asking the student to indicate using yes or no whether they were employed or not. Perceived level of stress was operationalized by totaling the participant’s response on 10 items that described the level of perceived stress in a participants. Perceived level of stress was a continuous variable. The hours of sleep indicated the number of hours that a student sleep during the night and was operationalized by asking the participant to indicate the number of hours spent sleeping.
Data collected from the participant was translated to a .csv file and analyzed using a syntax developed for the R Studio statistical software. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis were conducted to investigate the developed hypotheses.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
In regards to whether or not the students had jobs, the data analysis showed that 173 participants had job, while 126 participants did not have job.
health$job

No

Yes

173

126

The descriptive statistics for the number of hours that the participants slept and the total perceive stress were as follows:

Mean

Standard Deviation

health$sleep

7.066221

1.020271

health$pss_total

19.98328

6.376582

Inferential Statistics
A Welch two-sample t-test was conducted to examine whether the perceived level of stress differed based on whether the participants has a job or not. The p-value of the test is 0.6189, which is higher than the significance level alpha = 0.05. We can conclude that there is no statisticall...