Analytical Report on Stress and Anxiety Levels in Students

Prepared for NASBE

Prepared by Laylah Russell, Natalia Martinez, Priscilla Martinez

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Table of Contents

Page 1: Cover Page

Page 2: Table of Contents

Page 3: Introduction

Page 4: Observation: Why are you stressed?

Page 5: Data & Analysis of stress levels in students

Page 6: Overview of Interviews with Professionals

Page 7: Conclusion

Page 8: Conclusion Continued

Page 9: References

Introduction

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Students all over the world experience stress. Stress is very common in all living

organisms. Its essential to our survival, but if we become overstressed it can negatively affect our

health. For example, consider a rabbit hiding in the bushes from a predator, the rabbit becomes

stressed and adrenaline rushes into its system and when it's discovered by the predator the rabbit

sprints out of the bushes very fast, saving its life. The rabbit received just enough stress

adrenaline to properly perform the flight response. Now on the other side, picture the rabbit

hiding in the bushes again, but this time it becomes overstressed, and too much adrenaline rushes

through its body, when this happens the brain does not respond correctly. Instead of sprinting

away from the danger, when the rabbit is discovered it stays still in fright and it's killed by the

predator. In students this can be compared to having just enough homework that you finish it all

in time and its excellent work, and having too much homework and too many things to do that

you're brain crashes and you don't get anything done because you're too exhausted even though

you've only completed 10% of your workload. And just like the rabbit, you suffer the

consequences by receiving bad grades or judgements by your peers.In this report the specific

school we will be looking at as a control is Arrowhead Park Early College High School where

we conducted the majority of our data. This school is a high school but the students also receive

their associates along with their high school diploma, making it a stressful environment for the

students. In the following paragraphs we will analyze student stressors, evaluate them, and give

suggestions based on our data about how students can relieve excessive stress and organize their

life once again.

Observation: Why are you stressed?

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Factors such as competition, changing family patterns, and unhealthful lifestyles (such

as a poor diet, excessive exposure to television, and limited exercise) contribute to the physical

manifestations of stress (Bagdi, 2004). On top of that, students experience stressors associated

with too much homework, too many projects, mandatory extracurriculars. Life, especially

student life, is a balancing act. Students are like a bunch of acrobats performing unbelievable,

almost inhuman yet completely expected tricks for their audience of peers, colleagues, and

teachers. We observed some major stressors here at Arrowhead. Almost every year a death is

experienced and it affects all the students in this close knit environment. We realised that this

may occur in every school, and then individually in students lives. Even when the death involves

the school system, nobody ever really does anything about it. Workload never changes and

students never get a break, and that can be traumatizing. After unfortunate happenings people

need a time to grieve and to process what has happened. Students don't get this grace period,

casing a huge amount of stress that never actually goes away. I know in my experience, I am still

traumatized by the suicide of a friend my freshman year of highschool. Resources that schools

may provide are counselors, and going to them about any problem really helps talk off you're

stressors. Talking is one of the most widely used ways to relieve stress. This is because most of

students stressors exist in their mind only and not in the physical world. When a student believes

they are unable to finish a project in time or if they will never be able to get over being rejected

for a scholarship or a job interview, they are creating that stress all on their own when in fact

they can finish that project and they can get over being rejected, it happens to everyone.

Data and Analysis of stress levels in students

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Below are a few questions we asked Arrowhead students in regards to their stressors, 0

being the least and 5 being the most. According to Hartman (2017), Because engaging in goal

directed behavior is more difficult when there is cognitive interference, individuals who struggle

with goal directed behavior might be expected to display more test anxiety. Clearly this is

expressed in our data, the more homework and school work that is received, the higher the test

anxiety seems to be.

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Overview of Interviews with Professionals

We interviewed a few professionals and asked them about resources used to relieve some

stress and/ or cope with it. We spoke to the therapists at the Ben Archer clinic on our Arrowhead

Park campus and our school counselor/advisor. Our group interviewed these professionals with a

series of questions, including: What are some resources within this school to help students cope

with stress that are encouraged to use?, What are the subjects that you have observed to cause

the most stress in students?, and What were some of the worst cases of stress they have seen in

students? Their responses were very helpful and informational.

Some of the encouraged resources that were recommended by the therapists and our school

counselor were to go to the Ben Archer Clinic, school counselor, school Nurse, social worker to

speak to someone. Some other sources could be using the sleep machine or participating when

the TADD group brings in registered emotional support dogs could be used as forms of relieving

stress.

Some of the most common classes that have been observed from the therapist and

counselor, that we interviewed, to cause the most amount of stress have been more of the math

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and sciences. Furthermore, some of the worst cases that they have seen in students here at

Arrowhead have been when there were threats to self-harm or when a student did not want to go

to school because of how stressed they are.

We were able to find an exposition of a study that was conducted to see the difference of

perceptions between male and female students and faculty members on academic stress. The

study consisted of 249 students and 67 faculty members with the average student being 21 and

the average faculty member being 42. The way the study was presented to the participants was

through means of a questionnaire, much like what we did. And after all, the conclusion gathered

by the study was that faculty members perceived the students to experience a higher level of

stress and to display reactions to stressors more frequently than the students actually perceived.

Some explanation to these results could be that professors always see students in their time of

higher stress levels, also the stress levels in student vary across the school year and the gender of

the students.

Conclusion

In conclusion we found that most teens in high school experience stress. With the stress

of school work extracurricular activities and school work its important for teens to know how to

deal with stress. If teens don't know how to deal with stress it could lead to giving up on school

being overwhelmed. There are many ways to alleviate stress. A few suggestions we have is to

talk to someone about how you feel, listen to music while you work, take 5 minute breaks every

20 minutes of studying, and get involved in physical activity. According to Bland (2014),

Physical activity has been well-documented as an effective means of reducing stress and

anxiety. In a student's life, it can be difficult to fit this into your schedule. Its important for

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teens to make time when they are feeling stressed to stop and take a breather. If students don't do

things to manage stress they can end up overwhelmed which is why we chose this topic. As high

school students we have experienced a good amount of stress over the years and all of us handle

it different; many of our peers don't know how to deal with stress all the time which is why we

saw it be a good topic on which we can all relate to and would help many of our peers. We

researched the topic and we interviewed professionals at the school who deal with stressed teens,

we also did a survey and found that most teens are stressed. We found that most teens get

stressed before a test, most teens feel overwhelmed by homework. Overall this research was to

find out if teens are stressed and try to help them figure out what they can do to decrease the

stress.

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References

Bagdi, A. (2004). Too young to be stressed. Childhood Education, 80(4), 202+. Retrieved
from
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Bland, H. W., Melton, B. F., Bigham, L. E., & Welle, P. D. (2014). Quantifying the
impact of physical activity on stress tolerance in college students. College Student
Journal, 48(4), 559+. Retrieved from
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Hartman, S. D., Wasieleski, D. T., & Whatley, M. A. (2017). Just breathe: the effects of
emotional dysregulation and test anxiety on GPA. College Student Journal, 51(1), 142+.
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Misra, R., McKean, M., West, S., & Russo, T. (2000). Academic stress of college students:
comparison of student and faculty perceptions. College Student Journal, 34(2), 236+.
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