A dissertation on academic stress among master’s students and challenges with time management

Tagged: Dissertation Writing

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Introduction

Our modern societies are defined by stress. Stress is affecting an increasing number of people, irrespective of gender or age. Stress comes as a result of an individual’s assessment of their ability to cope with a circumstance that exceeds their available resources, placing individual bodily, emotional, and psychological well-being at danger. Furthermore, stress can have negative medical and psychological impacts such as decreased appetite, tachycardia, depression, nervousness, headaches, immunological suppression, and difficulty sleeping (Allen HK, 2021).

Master’s students frequently view their stress levels to be above average on stress scales, which can have a negative impact on their lives, leading to impaired coping, a lack of self-concept and competency, non-completion of graduate studies, low academic achievement, and reduced cognitive functioning (Brown, 2016). Statistics show that 27% of graduate students who reported feeling stressed in the previous year said it had a negative influence on their academic performance. The extent to which stress is connected with graduate student functioning and possible programme dropout is an understudied and significant topic of research, with only 50% to 75% of graduate students finishing their degree (Conley, 2013).

Stress is also intricately linked to burnout. Burnout, which was first applied to occupational situations, is often defined by three dimensions. The first dimension, weariness, relates to fatigue caused by a person’s emotional resources being exhausted. The development of negative or apathetic views towards the validity of a person’s work is the second dimension, cynicism. Finally, inefficacy refers to sentiments of incompetence and personal failure. Prior research has investigated these elements of burnout among graduate students, notably tiredness, when applied to burnout from an academic programme (Boren, 2013). According to the findings, graduate students report significant levels of weariness, cynicism, and inefficacy, and high levels of the exhaustion dimension of burnout are connected with intentions to leave academia and decreased programme satisfaction and success (Eicher, 2014).

Objective

The dissertation seeks to understand:

• The causes for stress among master’s students in a UK university, and
• The methods students use to cope up with it.

Research questions

1. What factors lead to stress among master’s students in a UK university?
2. What coping mechanisms do the students opt to manage stress?

Review of Literature

According to Hurst (2012), the causative factors of stress among master’s students in the UK are related to meeting peers’ expectations and lack of technology. Students indicated anxiety about building formal connections with authority figures, as well as pressures related to their demands for respect and support from faculty members. Some students expressed sensitivity to teachers demonstrating varying levels of engagement and assistance to students, with students in the United Kingdom noting email responsiveness and a willingness to make time to see students as examples. A friendly and helpful mentoring relationship, a supervisor’s leadership style, and a solid work-life balance, on the other hand, are related with better mental health.

Moreover, students with learning disabilities viewed themselves differently from others and felt isolated. They believed that their impairment influenced how others perceived, interacted with, and understood them. These contributed to their academic stress (Evans, 2018).

Methodology

To conduct the study, postgraduate students from Manchester Metropolitan University were selected. This university is among the largest in the UK, with over 40,000 students and has an acceptance rate of about eighty per cent. The institution offers postgraduate courses in multiple disciplines that include accounting, economics, engineering, nutrition, law, marketing and arts. The data collection procedure was conducted in two stages: first a questionnaire about stress, its symptoms and effects and the second pertained to the demographic characteristics. The questionnaires were sent to students via Google forms.

For the study, first year master’s students were selected since this marks a phase of transition and they may experience stress related to it. Data was collected between November and December 2022. Convenience sampling was done for this study. About 125 participants were included in this study and the qualitative research methodology was used. The data was processed using Microsoft excel and the content analysis was done using the NVivo software. About 65 (52%) study participants were female and 60 (48%) were male. About 80 (64%) participants were aged 23-27 years and the remaining 45 (36%) were aged 28-40 years.

The respondents were enrolled in law (28, 22.4%), marketing (35, 28%), nutrition (32, 25.6%) and engineering (30, 24%). About 55(44%) respondents were from the UK, 7(5.6%) were from France, 15 (12%) from China, 9(7.2%) from Mexico, 10(8%) from India, 9 (7.2%) from Germany, 10 (8%) from Philippines and 10 (8%) were from Italy.

Results, Analysis and Discussion

The study allowed to identify the social and financial factors contributing to stress and the consequent symptoms.

According to Leslie (2021), the causes of stress could be institutional, which could be related to the curriculum, workload, time constraints and lack of guidance from their mentors. Psychological causes for stress could include being away from home, domestic tasks and engaging in jobs for meeting their needs.

The study revealed that about 55% of the students were feeling stressed. This finding is nearly twice than that of 30.6%, according to a global review (Ejim, 2021). Of the various factors contributing to stress, time management related to exams (60%). Students who have to balance their academics and work feel more stressed (52%). This is followed by socio-cultural barriers (40%) which includes language barriers. Other factors include lack of clarity about the future (30.4%) and conflict with their parents (22.4%)

Students are experiencing various symptoms due to stress. They include fatigue resulting from burnout (35%), sleep disturbances (28%), and frequent headaches (14%). Other symptoms included difficulty concentration, malaise, sadness, irritability, panic attacks, anxiety, stomach ache, dizziness and palpitations.

For stress management, students participate in recreational activities like sports (20%), outdoor activities like going to the gym (15%) and walking (11%). Some seek to reduce stress by taking breaks (8%), reading books (5%) and listening to podcasts (2%). Some students have also resorted to drinking (3%) and smoking (2%) to reduce stress.

Ethical considerations

• Informed consent: The participants were given complete information about the research before the interview.
• Confidentiality: Confidentiality was maintained throughout the research process to protect the participants’ identities and ensure the accuracy of the data.

Conclusion

The study is an exploration of the factors leading to academic stress among master’s students at Manchester Metropolitan University. The factors include difficulty with time management, prioritising tasks, socio-cultural differences, a lack of clarity about the future and conflict with their parents. It is crucial for academic and institutional participants to comprehend and clearly define the sources of stress in order to provide appropriate and long-term solutions in order to overcome this. Their living conditions must be improved, and their dread of the future must be valued, so that the stress they are experiencing does not become an insurmountable barrier to the future of future generations.

Check out our blog Understanding and Managing Stress: A Guide for Master’s Dissertation Students to know more about the factors causing stress and how to manage it during master’s dissertation.
To know more about how a dissertation is written in various fields, check out our dissertation examples.

References

1. Allen HK, Barrall AL, Vincent KB, Arria AM. Stress and Burnout Among Graduate Students: Moderation by Sleep Duration and Quality. Int J Behav Med. 2021 Feb;28(1):21-28.
2. Kimarie Brown, Pauline Anderson-Johnson, Andrea Norman McPherson, Academic-related stress among graduate students in nursing in a Jamaican school of nursing, Nurse Education in Practice, Volume 20,2016, Pages 117-124.
3. Conley, C. S., Travers, L. V., & Bryant, F. B. (2013). Promoting psychosocial adjustment and stress management in first-year college students: The benefits of engagement in a psychosocial wellness seminar. Journal of American College Health, 61(2), 75-86.
4. Boren JP. Co-rumination partially mediates the relationship between social support and emotional exhaustion among graduate students. Commun Q. 2013;61(3):253–67.
5. Eicher, V., Staerklé, C., & Clémence, A. (2014). I want to quit education: A longitudinal study of stress and optimism as predictors of school dropout intention. Journal of adolescence, 37(7), 1021-1030.
6. Hurst, C. S., Baranik, L. E., & Daniel, F. (2012). College Student Stressors: A Review of the Qualitative Research. Stress and Health, n/a–n/a.
7. Evans TM, Bira L, Gastelum JB, Weiss LT, Vanderford NL. Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nat Biotechnol. 2018;36(3): 282284.
8. Kadene Leslie, Kimarie Brown, Joyette Aiken, Perceived academic-related sources of stress among graduate nursing students in a Jamaican University, Nurse Education in Practice, Volume 53,2021,103088.
9. Ejim, Olivia & Livanou, Maria & Khan, Harun & Lindenmeyer, Antje & Uwom, Chinedum & Manaseki-Holland, Semira. (2021). Depression, Anxiety and Stress Among International Postgraduate Students in a Uk University: A Cross-Sectional Study.