The relationship between stress and sociodemographic and academic characteristics among students

Abstract

The study presents an active and turbulent period of life in which almost all students face stress. Due to that, this paper examines the presence of stress in student population and the contribution of sociodemographic and academic characteristics to explaining stress that they experience. The research included 170 students from different universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely "Džemal Bijedić" University in Mostar, the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, the Islamic Pedagogical Faculty in Zenica, the Islamic Pedagogical Faculty in Bihać and the Faculty of Philosophy in Tuzla. The research findings showed that 38.2% of the respondents experienced moderate, severe or very severe stress symptoms, which is not an insignificant result. Based on the results of a linear regression analysis, we determined that socioeconomic status is a significant stress factor (β=.204, p=.008), while gender (β=.113, p=.142) and age (β=.005, p =.950) are not significant stress factors among students. Moreover, as far as academic characteristics are concerned, GPA (β=-.017, p=.826) is not a significant stress factor in student population, while study status (β=.157, p=.043) and the year of study (β= -.166, p=.033) present significant stress factors. Using the independent samples T-test and One-way ANOVA, we determined that female students are more susceptible to stress than male students (t=2.408, p=.017), that older students experience a higher level of stress (F=3.110, p=.043), and that students of lower socioeconomic status exhibit a higher level of stress (F=3.258, p=.040). When it comes to academic characteristics, the research findings indicated that there is no statistically significant difference in the level of experienced stress based on GPA (F=1.446, p=.231) and the year of study (F=2.384, p=.055); however, the research showed that part-time students show a higher level of stress compared to full-time students (F=6.23, p=.002). Keywords: stress, sociodemographic characteristics, academic characteristics, students.