Research Paper Example: Stress Among Upperclassmen and Underclassmen

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to determine if upperclassmen (juniors and seniors) are more stressed than underclassmen (first-years and sophomores). Upperclassmen are population 1 and underclassmen are population 2. Our research hypothesis is that upperclassmen are more stressed than underclassmen. This is because we believe that upperclassmen typically take more challenging classes, whereas underclassmen, first-years in particular, are still transitioning to college so their professors do not assign them as much work as they do upperclassmen. Our null hypothesis is that upperclassmen are not more stressed than underclassmen.

Method

Our population is composed of college students from all class years. They chose to participate in a survey provided to them via Google Forms. This form had 4 questions. The first asked them to pick their class year (First-year, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior) from a drop-down menu. The second asked how many hours of sleep they got and had them choose from a drop-down ranging from 1 hour to 10 and then an option for “11 or more”. The hours were counted in increments of 30 minutes (i.e. 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3…). The third question asked the student to rank how stressed they were that day on a scale of 1 (not at all stressed) to 10 (extremely stressed). And finally, the fourth question asked if they ate breakfast today with the multiple-choice options of “yes” or “no”. We collected more data than we needed in order to decide which variables we wanted to compare. In the end, we chose to use class year and stress level. We grouped the participants who are first-years and sophomores as underclassmen, and participants who are juniors and seniors as upperclassmen.

The independent variable is nominal and determined by the student picking their class year. The dependent variable is quantitative and determined by the student’s rating of their stress level on a scale of 1 (not at all stressed) to 10 (extremely stressed). 

Results

We reject the null hypothesis and find support for our research hypothesis that upperclassmen (M= 7.48, S = 1.77) are more stressed than underclassmen (M= 6.3, S = 10.69), therefore our results are statistically significant t(92)= 2.15, p < .05. We used the 5% significance level (p<.05) for a 1-tailed t-test for independent means. Our dftotal was 92. The cutoff score needed to reject the null hypothesis using the t distribution for a 1-tailed test at the 5% significance level (p < .05) with 92 total degrees of freedom was 1.61. We determined our data’s t-score on the comparison distribution (2.15). The effect size (d = .45) was medium. Taking the medium effect size of .5 using the one-tailed test with 100 scores, our power is nearly 1. This means that we have a very high chance of finding a significant difference if there is one. This study does have practical significance given that it supports the hypothesis that upperclassmen students are more stressed than underclassmen thus enabling us to call attention to the need for more targeted programs aimed at helping upperclassmen to de-stress for example. There are theoretical implications for this study as well. This study could warrant more measures of the effect of stress on other areas of life or even the ability for different strategies to relieve stress using a before-after design.  

Limitations

One limitation is that our sample is not truly random because it is comprised of those who chose to participate in the survey making this a voluntary response sample. We are also limited by the fact that everyone measures stress differently. One person’s level 10 could be another’s 7 or 8 if they handle stress better. We also do not know the compounding variables that could be affecting a person’s life. Ideally, we would have also liked for this Google Form to have reached the entire school, but that was not possible and therefore only those who saw our Instagram stories or were given the link by one of our team members knew that the study was being conducted at all. Another limitation is that the survey was opened two weeks before finals and closed a week before finals. This could have contributed to the participants’ high-stress levels since this is typically a stressful time of the semester for students. 

Future Studies

It would be interesting to conduct future studies on additional academic factors that could contribute to one’s stress such as major. Additionally, if we were able to repeat a similar study with more participants we could measure stress levels across all four different class years rather than just across upperclassmen versus underclassmen. We also collected data regarding both sleep and if students had eaten breakfast or not. In the future more could be done with this data, potentially linking them to the already tested variables of class year and stress level. Hopefully, more can be done to reduce stress for upperclassmen in the future. This could lead to future follow-up studies that test whether the efforts to reduce stress in upperclassmen are successful. A future study could also address the previously mentioned limitation of the fact that everyone measures stress differently. A study that would address this could be conducted using more specific questions relating to stress that when put together, would help us to paint a more accurate and holistic picture of someone’s stress level. Another limitation that a future study could address was that stress levels vary throughout the semester. This could be addressed by gathering data at multiple different points throughout the semester/year. In gathering data from different time periods, a better understanding of students' overall stress levels could be obtained.