ANALYSIS OF CAUSES OF ACADEMIC STRESS AMONG HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: EVIDENCE FROM KARACHI
Keywords:
Stressors, Higher Secondary School Students, Likert Five-Point Scale, Convenience Sampling, Targeted InterventionsAbstract
This quantitative study investigates the factors causing stress among higher secondary school students under the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi. A questionnaire based on Likert’s five-point scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, was administered to grades XI and XII students across six districts of Karachi for data collection via convenience sampling. Based on the literature review, the questionnaire addressed various factors that contribute to student stress, including environmental, academic, relationship, and personal stressors. The higher the scoring for each factor towards strongly agree, the higher is the degree of stress produced by it. The results identified that the major causes of stress concerning each factor is such that Environmental factors had the highest impact on students particularly the fear of meeting parents’ expectations (79%), lack of time to plan or get engaged in de-stressing activities (77%) and peer distraction (73%). Academic factors were found to be the second most significant stressors including fear to fail in unannounced tests (75%), unclear content delivery and ambiguous assessment tasks (70%). Relationship challenges, such as the interaction and working with strict or biased teachers (80%), and personal struggles like balancing academics and social activities (78%), were also significant. The study concludes that institutions should prioritize awareness of these stressors and implement targeted interventions, such as stress-relief programs and transparent academic guidelines, to facilitate students’ coping with stress. Replicating this research across other examination boards could enhance generalizability to broader student populations.
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