PowerPoint Presentation

Patricia HarrisPhD research studentFaculty of Health, Life and Social Science

Student stress project

Lemonade,FreeDigitalPhotos.net Stoonn,FreeDigitalPhotos.net Renjith krishnan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net Photokanok,FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello my name is Patricia Harris. Im a final year PhD student at Edinburgh Napier University and Im based within the faculty of health, life and social science.

For the last 3 years Ive been looking into stress at my university.

We focused on the students from life science, rather than the nursing half of the faculty, due to the lack of literature studying students outwith healthcare courses.

We assessed students perceived stress, general health, recent life events, causes of stress, coping, use of support and intention to withdraw from university using a combination of psychometric questionnaires and questions designed specifically for the studys needs.

1MalesP=0.372(Bromley, Sproston, and Shelton 2005)What we found was that life science students were perceiving stress at the same level as those on healthcare courses

And that our students were at an increased risk of affective disorders in comparison to the general public

Some may find this surprising believing that medical or nursing students would feel under much greater stress than a BSc student.

NB/ PSS-10 version used for comparison (Briks study found no difference between M and F responses so no gender split)

GHQ-12 sensitivity and specificity values taken from GHQ user guide to produce % at risk of having a positive diagnosis following clinical assessment.2Support ServiceAverage % of students who have never heard of the serviceCounselling54%Student advice service44.5%Academic advisors37.5%Funding support34%Careers31.5%Confident Futures22%Student mentor20%Student association11.5%Personal development tutor9%What I found more shocking was the data we collected surrounding student support.

Despite an extensive range of academic and personal support services, students appeared unaware of the help available to them.

Here you can see that Counselling, personal/academic advice, funding and careers were the lest well-known.

While Personal tutors were used by most students.3

Karl Baron, Flickr

DukeUnivLibraries, Flickr

Student funding, Edinburgh Napier University

graur razvan ionut, FreeDigitalPhotos.netWhat is more worrying is that these least know services are the very ones that could support students with the issues they listed to be most stressful: exams/assessments, managing your time, money worries and considering your future career.

Counselling, academic advice, funding and careers could help minimise these causes of stress or provide support during times of stress.

The lack of support use prompted us to explore the topic further using small focus groups4

1 in 4 people have mental ill-health, many more have a problem with that.Although a lack of awareness regarding the services was frequently cited as the reason for poor support use, the topic of stigma also emerged.

Stigma is known to exist around areas of mental health and qualitative data collected shows that our cohort is no exception.

I have some example quotes from the students on the next slide,The first suggests that peers would interpret the use of counselling as an indication of sever problems and thus create an environment where students would perhaps not use or not admit to accessing support.

The second clip is a conversation between 3 students where they report letting problems mount considerably before seeking guidance or support, suggesting that they are unaware of what levels of stress necessitate seeking support.

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I think the term counselling puts a lot of people off, if you say youre going to see a counsellor it can be misinterpreted for so many different things they may think oh he must have something really wrong.Me personally, I just bottle it up to the point where its just like (explosion gestured).

Struggle through till you know you cant anymore (before asking for help)

then burst into tears and run to your PDT Ive done that a few times.

STUDTEVOICE N

Audio clip 25 seconds

In the last clip we hear one of the students mentioning going to their PDT.When we asked students why they choose a PDT over support that may be more specialised and better able to help, students told us that it was the familiarity with the academic staff that made them more appealing to talk to than student and academic services.

6Stress categorySeriously considered dropoutHigh stress1:1.7 (59%)Medium stress1:2.8 (35%)Low stress1:17 (6%)Stress categoryUn-enrolled within 1 year High stress1:2.1 (47%)Low stress1:4.6 (21%)OR3.3So weve seen how stress and support use are distributed throughout the cohort, but what effect could this be having on retention?

Students with higher perceived stress were more likely to consider dropout from university.

A follow up of the students from the high and low stress categories shows that being in the top quartile for perceived stress makes you over 3 times more likely to withdraw from your studies.

NB/ Subsample was the upper quartile (high stress) and lower quartile (low stress)7

Sophie Punke, http://youreingoodcompany.net

35% of the 62 students followed up had leftAlamy, www.the gauridan.com Master isolated images, FreeDigitalPhotos.netSo weve seen that our life science students are:perceiving high levels of stress, at a high risk of affective disorders, not aware of the support available to them and not sure at what point to seek help,experiencing stigma associated with admitting problems and accessing supportAnd it seems that a combination of these factors could be contributing to the high withdrawal percentage found within the sampled cohort 35%

It is worth noting that the students sampled in this study were engaged with their studies in that data collection occurred at the end of timetabled lectures. This therefore suggests that current systems of identifying at risk students by way of disengagement would overlook a sub-population who are experiencing stress and who are at risk of withdrawal but who still come to class. 8

Adapted from www.thecollege.co.ukWe argue that the stress seen in ours and others studies, coupled with an unwillingness to seek support leaves the potential for stress to hinder learning, successful progression and the student experience within the engaged student population.

We believe this should be taken into consideration when attempting to enhance the student journey

Our current research focus is the development and evaluation of an evidence based stress interventions which would address the issues highlighted today, namely:

High perceived stressA lack of knowledge regarding stress and when to seek helpPoor awareness of the support availableStigma surrounding admitting to stress and seeking help And ultimately retention

9Acknowledgements Dr Samantha Campbell Casey; Dr Tony Westbury; Lucy McVey; Margarida Dias, Fern Findlay, Christopher Coyle; Faculty Assistant Dean Fran Alston.Your experience of providing information or opportunities to build stress resilience in the STEM student cohort.

I would like to finish by provoking some discussion for later onMy question to you is how can we best improve our students stress resilience in order that they may take advantage of all the opportunities available to them while studying for a bachelors degree? Has anything be done in your institutions? Was it well received? Was a difference noted by either the students or staff?

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