Chapter 1 of Factors of Stress Among Students

1. Introduction

Nowadays , stress  permeates almost every aspect of society and has now has become a normal experience for most Malaysians. Everyone undergoes stress due their daily activities and other factors. Statistical evidence shows the  increasing rate of stress,and commonly students undergo the most.

Researchers (Vermunt And Steensman,2005;Topper,2007;Ussery ,2007;Malach-Pines And Keinan,2007) have defined stress as the perception of discrepancy between environmental demands (stressors) and individual capacities to fulfill these demands.while researcher (Campbell,2006) defines stress as the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed on them. Stree occurs when an individual confronted by a situation that they perceive as overwhelming and cannot cope up with.

Concerning the factor that causes stress among students,academic stress among students have long been researched on,and researchers have identified stressors as too many assignments,competition with other students,failures,lack of pocket money (Fairbrother and Warn,2003) poor relationship with other students or lecturers,family or problems at home .Institutional level stressors are overcrowded lecture halls,(Ongori,2007;Awino and Agolla,2008), semester system ,and inadequate resources to perform academic work.Erkutlu and Chafra (2006) for instance opines that,when these events take place,an individual becomes disorganized,disoriented  and therefore less able to cope up,thus resulting in stress related health problems.

Though in such situation, students stress has not gained much attention since most scholars were preoccupied with conventional work related stress as opposed to academic students stress. Institution in Malaysia have not taken serious steps to find out the health of the students, moreover past studies were more focused on undergraduates and graduates (Denise Pfeiffer,2001). It is extremely important to understand  the sources of stress among students  and how are they suppose to manage it.

In this paper we are trying to assess the academic stress among pre-university students.

1. Problem Statement

There are a number of streams of research that are relevant to this study.   These include those addressing the factors that have significant effects of academic and environmental stress among  on undergraduate and graduate college students academic stress among students  (Denise Pfeiffer,2001).  

There are billions of students and each of them are potential to undergo stress.growing education system and the number of  institution it emphasizes the need of this research.According to key note, “assessment of academic stress among pre- university students”.Academic work is never without stressful activities(Joseph E.Agolla;Henry Ongori, 2009.)