Emotional maturity psychological resilience and locus of control as correlates of academic stress among higher secondary school students

Abstract

Academic stress and related problems have become a growing concern all overthe world. Despite the availability of many experimentally proven psychotherapeuticmeasures to alleviate academic stress, the graph of academic stress always shows anupward trend. It points to the need for controlling academic stress at a morefundamental level by manipulating and controlling psychological factors at the bottomlevel of academic stress. In this context, the present study aims to understand howpsychological factors like emotional maturity, psychological resilience, and locus ofcontrol are related to academic stress of one of the most vulnerable group of students,viz., the higher secondary school students. The descriptive study employed surveymethod to collect data from a stratified random sample of 1232 higher secondaryschool students (Male = 583; Female = 649) in the age range 16-19, from 23 schoolsunder Directorate of Higher Secondary Education, Govt. of Kerala. The data collectedpsychometric instruments were analysed with SPSS to test 13 null hypotheses.The results of the analyses showed that demographic factors like type of family,and ordinal position exert significant differential influence on the distribution ofacademic stress and all the independent variables. While gender exert significantdifferential influence on all the variables except psychological resilience, thedifferential effect of socio-economic status is limited to locus of control. Emotionalmaturity, psychological resilience, and internal locus of control are significantly andnegatively correlated to academic stress showing that any improvement in these factorswill be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in academic stress experienced bythe students. While socio-economic status is a decisive factor in the relationship ofacademic stress to emotional maturity, psychological resilience, and locus of control,gender limit its influence to the relationship of academic stress to emotional maturityand psychological resilience. Though some of the ordinal positions are critical in theassociation of academic stress to emotional maturity and psychological resilience, typeof family do not exert any significant differential effect on the relationship of academicstress to any of the independent variables. Emotional Maturity (EM), Psychological Resilience (PR), and Internal Locusof Control (ILC) exert significant main effect on Academic Stress (AST). Emotionalmaturity and psychological resilience have significant interaction effects onacademic stress. Likewise, locus of control also has significant interaction effect onacademic stress with psychological resilience. The effect of emotional maturity onacademic stress in interaction with locus of control, however, is not significant. Theindependent variables have significant interaction effects on academic stress of HSS-students. While emotional maturity can significantly explain 38.5% variability,psychological resilience can explain 14.4% and internal locus of control can explain10.4% variabilities in academic stress of HSS-students. A total of 43.4% variabilityin the academic stress can be predicted jointly by the independent variables. All theindependent variables significantly contribute to the prediction of the dependentvariable. The multiple regression equation for academic stress (AST) worked out tobe AST = 258.904 – (0.536 X EM) – (0.095 X PR) – (0.202 X ILC).The findings of the study implies that immunity against academic stress must bedeveloped in students right from the beginning of education by taking measures tostrengthen their emotional maturity, psychological resilience and internal locus ofcontrol. Any measure taken by the school to alleviate academic stress by fosteringemotional maturity, psychological resilience, and internal locus of control shouldaddress female students, students from nuclear families and the ‘only children’, on apriority base. While providing counselling service to abate academic stress, teachersand school counsellors/psychologists should consider the influential demographicfactors to group them so as to make the intervention more effective. The significantinteraction effects of the independent variables on academic stress implies the need forability grouping of students based on these factors for school-based group therapy. Theregression equation has its implications for teachers, school counsellors/psychologists,administrators, curriculum planners, teacher educators and researchers to find out thevalue of one factor provided the value of other factors are known. The study has madesuggestion for further research in the light of the new avenues opened from currentresearch.