Stress - Health Problems and Coping Strategies in Health Assessment

Question: Describe about the Stress, Health Problems and Coping Strategies in Health Assessment. Answer: Introduction Ways of dealing with stress are used by international students while dealing with stress situations. The objective of this study was to determine the correlation between psychological adaption and how to cope with stress. When in a foreign country, students face a number of challenges that result in stressful situations. Such conditions include academic pressure, language challenges, longing for home, not having community support, diminished self-worth and lack of confidence. In normal cases, international students have to learn a new language and are under pressure from home since a lot is expected from them. Additionally, international students undergo accuration process defined by Berry (1995) as a stressful major event, which requires stress coping strategies. Stress coping is behavioral and cognitive efforts made by a person to respond to internal and external demands, which are perceived as demanding lots of effort.A study done I New Zealand by Chai (2009) showed that international students use refusal, censure themselves and are disengaged in demeanor coping strategies than local students. In another study by Amponsah, (2010) established that international students utilize problem-geared methods of dealing with stress followed by seeking for support socially and demeanor-geared method. The intention of the research was determine the influences of accuration process on psychological adaption. The study theorized that methods of dealing with stress coping are associated with psychological adaption of international students in distinct ways from that of local students. In addition, it was hypothesized that stress is associated with health strategies. Therefore, the rationale of the study was to ascertain the relationship between psychological adaption and stress coping strategies of international and local students; to determine whether there was an association between stress and health strategies. The hypotheses therefore were H0: There is relationship between stress and health challenges among international students. H0: There is a relationship between stress and coping strategies among international students Method A sample of 31 students from RMIT University, faculty of Psychology studies was used. The Coping Orientation of Problem Experience (COPE) suggested by Carver et al. (1989) was used to measure characteristics of methods of dealing with stress. As a data collection tool, a questionnaire was used that was divided into 3 parts. Part 1 comprised of demographic information that included age gender, specialty and course. Part 2 was the student stress scale, part 3 health problems scale, response or strategy to deal with stress questionnaire. A likert scale was used to measure the student stress level where higher scores indicated more utilization of a specific coping strategy Respondents were divided into two groups, international and local students. To measure health complaints, a scale was used that contained 12 symptoms identified in past studies a s symptoms related to stress (23). Participants were asked how often they experienced those symptoms in the last six months and the answers measured using a likert scale. Results Demographic Information and LCU Score for Stress Demographic information in the study indicated that males were 13 while females were eighteen. The age range of all the participants was between 17 and 29 years. The LCU score for stress levels indicated an overall mean of 233.5 score. In terms of gender, the LCU for females was slightly higher at 244.5 compared to that of males at 218.5 mean score. Conversely, male health problems score was higher at 11.6 than that of female at 10.6 while the overall health problems score stood at 11.0. In terms of strategy to deal with stress, it was almost equal between the genders with only 0.2 separating males and females at 9.5 and 9.7 respectively while the overall score was 9.6 making it almost a perfect match. Test for the Relationship between Stress, Health Problems and Coping Strategies To test the correlation between stress, health problems and coping strategies, Pearson Correlation coefficient was used. A correlation coefficient of 0.75 and above would be considered as a strong correlation. The first hypothesis to be tested was: H0: There is relationship between stress and health problems among international students. (null hypothesis) HA: There is no relationship between stress and health problems among international students. (alternative hypothesis) The survey revealed that there was some positive relationship between though not strong of 0.2171 (21.71%). This relationship was however not significant (r = 0.2171, p 0.05) and therefore the decision was to fail to reject the null hypothesis. There was no sufficient evidence to conclude that stress is associated with health problems. The correlation from the sample could have been brought about a sampling error of chance. The next hypothesis that was tested was; H0: There is relationship between stress and coping strategies among international students. (null hypothesis) HA: There is no relationship between stress and coping strategies among international students. (alternative hypothesis) The study revealed there was a positive relationship between stress and coping strategies among international students. The relationship was however not significant (r= 0.3109, p 0.05). Therefore the decision was to retain the null hypothesis. In addition, the correlation was weak and could have been brought about by chance. Discussion and Recommendations Demographic information revealed that females were more than males in the study that is, females were eighteen while males were thirteen. The collective LCU score for both genders was 233.5 while in terms of gender, LCU score for females was slightly higher. While dealing with stress males and females seemed to have an equal score. To test the hypotheses of the study, it was revealed that there is an association, though weak between stress and health challenges. This relationship was however not significant to suggest that stress is correlated with health problem. It was therefore concluded that the relationship determined in the study was brought about by chance and the study could have benefited from a bigger sample size. On the other hand, relationship between stress and coping strategies among international students was tested. This too, though a weak positive relationship existed, was not significant. The study therefore recommended that a similar study be replicated in another University and a bigger sample size be used. It was also recommended that a different sampling technique be used in addition to other inferential statistics such as multiple regression so as to determine the cause and effect between the independent variables and the dependent variable. Reference Amponsah, M. O. (2010). Non university students stress levels and their coping strategies.Educ Res,1(4), 8899. Berry, J. W. (1997). Lead article - immigration, acculturation, and adaptation.Applied Psychology,46(1), 534. doi:10.1080/026999497378467 Chai, P. P. (2009).Religion/spirituality as a stress coping mechanism for international students(PhD thesis). Auckland University of Technology, Auckland.