STRESS AND ACADEMIC BEHAVIOUR: A RELATIVE STUDY.

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the relationship between stress and academic achievement of high school students. The instrument included SPSSI designed and standardised by. Academic achievement was taken from the students’ achievement test. Data gathered from these instruments were correlated and the result showed a positive correlation between stress and academic achievement. Significant differences exist in the academic achievement of students having high and moderate stress.

INTRODUCTION

Academic excellence is of great importance in the current society. Unfortunately academic behaviour of high school students is becoming worrisome and this has remained a matter of grave concern to many educationists. These students have many obstacles to overcome in order to achieve their optimal academic performance. Recent studies suggest that most of the school going students of Kerala experience high level of stress due to various reasons. The effect of stress can be positive or negative. Positively used, stress can be a motivator for an improved quality of life. Stress can be negative, when it becomes destructive as a result of how an individual negatively perceived it and reacted to it.

     Mostly it is found that students with more stress behaviour show average or poor results in academic achievement. Their concentration never works properly in educational field.

NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE

            Nowadays students face so many problems which affect their learning. So             understanding the various problems faced by the students in the classroom is    significant. It is the need of the parents and teachers to identify the children who are   highly distracted. It is important to recognize their problems in order to help them to             achieve their maximum in their learning

       OBJECTIVES

       The main objectives of the study are:

Ø  To find out the various problems faced by the school children

Ø  To identify the child who is highly distracted

Ø  To understand the mood swings of children

Ø  To understand the level of stress  of the students

Ø  To find out the stress sources of the students

Ø  To  figure out the relation between level of stress and  achievement

Ø  To provide necessary assistance to the needy

METHODOLOGY

In developing Personal Stress Source Inventory (PSSI) a set of 35 items or personal sources of events that are likely to produce stress in a person were located. Then it was applied to the students. Students have to read the source events of personal life very carefully one by one and out of three given response options each event namely, ‘seldom’ ‘sometimes’ and ‘frequently’. The students are asked to put a tick mark on cell below the option which is most suited in their case. The event or item which does not apply in their case must be left unanswered

DESCRIPTION

With increasing complexity of our lifestyle, the level of stress has been increasing at a phenomenal rate. Stress is the process that occurs in response to the situations or events called stressors that disrupt our physical or psychological functioning. Although, we normally think stress to be coming from negative events in our lives. Positive events such as getting married or receiving an unexpected job promotion can also produce stress.

The nature of stress as global phenomenon has been studied by three important models, psychological model, load of information model and interactional model. Psychological model explains stress as a cluster of non specific symptoms that help persons to adopt to stressors

There are varieties of stress sources. Brown listed five categories of stress sources as customary life events, unexpected life events, progressive accumulating situational events, personality’s glitches and values dependent traits. In the present inventory attempt has been made to assess those stress which do arise from personal life

SCORING

The scoring of SPSSI is very simple. Every item marked as ‘ seldom’ by the testee is given a score of 1, marked as ‘sometimes’ is given a score 2 and marked as ‘frequently’ a score of zero. Scores earned by the testee on every marked item are added together to yield a total score. Higher the score, the higher is the magnitude of personal stress. Lower the score, lower is the magnitude of personal stress. The maximum score on SPSSI is 105

Range of Score	Qualitative Description
30 or higher	High level of stress
31 – 79	Moderate level of stress
0 – 30	Low level of stress

DATA COLLECTION

Sl. NO.		Score Obtained	Qualitative Description	Achievement(25)
1	84		High level of stress	1
2	90		High level of stress	3
3	40		Moderate level stress	16
4	94		High level of stress	2
5	56		Moderate level stress	12
6	85		High level of stress	9
7	85		High level of stress	7
8	64		Moderate level stress	18

ANALYSIS

On analysing the table, I realized that 62 per cent of the students experience high level of stress while the rest show moderate level. The highest score in the test is 94.The achievement test score of the students reveal a significant connection between stress and academic behaviour.Students with moderate stress scored much better that those with higher level of stress.

CONCLUSION

The findings of the present study reveal that there is a positive relationship between stress and achievement of students. Teachers should not be over concerned about students’ academic life. Instead they should help the students to remain concerned about their academic matter seriously . Guidance services should be provided to develop confidence among students for better adjustment in classroom, family and society. There should be adequate planning in academic work so that there would be adequate interval between periods of examination and continuous assessment tests