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Understanding student stress: A qualitative approach

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DOI: 10.1080/03033910.2001.10558278

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 The Irish Journal of Psychology

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Understanding student stress: A qualitative

approach

Declan Aherne

To cite this article: Declan Aherne (2001) Understanding student stress: A qualitative
approach, The Irish Journal of Psychology, 22:3-4, 176-187

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 Psychology, 2001, 22,3-4,

Understanding student stress: A

qualitative approach
,
Declan ·Aherne
University of Limerick
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The present study is a qualitative investigation of the stress experienced by

a group of 27 third level students. An interactianal approach to student
stress is explored, based on the primacy of student developmental needs.
Stress is examined in terms of the meaning of stressful experiences for
individuals. Experiences are considered stressful when they involve threats
to self-adequacy, where self-adequacy is understood as a basic human need.
The data collected in the present study consists of a series of interviews
carried out with each of the students over a three month period. The anal ysis
~
of data reveals a number of patterns of stress, with pattern~ of academic
over-identification, parental conflict and social inadequacy particularly
noteworthy. Gender differences with regard to the need for separateness
and belonging are highlighted and the relationship between stress and
developmental needs is reinforced.

There is considerable evidence that students experience stress (Beck &

Young, 1978; Fisher, 1994, ; Murphy & Archer, 1996: Nage1berg &
Shemberg, 1980; Offer & Spiro, 1987; Stone & Archer, 1990). That
students are under stress is reflected in their levels of physical and
psychological 'illness', cognitive skills deficits, examination anxiety and
attrition rates. Typically and consistently, students' academic stressors have
included examinations, time demands, competition and class environment
while the most common personal stressors have been intimate relation-
ships, finance and parental conflicts (Murphy & Archer, 1996).

Research on student stress broadly reflects research approaches to stress in

general. Appraisal Theory (Lazarus, 1976) has been a prominent
interactionist approach to the study of stress for the past 20 years. Appraisal
Theory poses the question "What is at stake" for someone under stress. The

Correspondence address: Dr. DecIan Aherne, University of Limerick, Castleroy,

Limerick, Ireland.
 Student stress 177

prevailing view amongst stress researchers is that stress is determined by

the perception of life events as threatening (Lazarus, 1976). Perception in
turn is determined by need (Adler, 1927; Levine, Chein & Murphy, 1942;
Snygg & Combs, 1949). It follows that the perception of threat can be due
to a threat to need satisfaction. Models of stress, therefore, must incorporate
an acknowledgement of human needs. To date models of stress have tended
not to make specific reference to human needs. A model of stress based on
human needs is proposed in the present paper to address this issue and to
help towards identifying what is at stake for students under stress. This
model is based on Combs, Richards and Richards' (1976) suggestion that
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each person is seeking all the time to maintain and enhance hislher
perceived self. According to Combs et aI., our basic human need is to make
ourselves ever more adequate to cope with life. We can consider stress to
be brought about by threats to one's self-adequacy. At its extreme this
threat will be experienced as 'self-annihilation' (Rowe, 1987), which is
ultimately what is at stake when one is under stress.
The interactional approach to stress is most appropriate for the
understanding of student stress (Whitman, Spendlove & Clark, 1984). A
distinct feature of the interactional approach as applied to students is that the
personal component in the interaction process has focused more on student
development than on any other personal variable.
Some interactional approaches place more of the burden on the
individual, whilst other approaches focus more on the environment. Paul
(1980) advises that the focus of research should be maintained on the
individual, ensuring that control and responsibility is retained by the person
and there being less likelihood of feelings of helplessness. However
models of stress have not tended to emphasise the self as a central
component in their explanations of stress. Nor has there been any great
attempt in the research to examine and clarify 'what is at stake' for students
when they experience stress.
The relationship between stress and development for college stu-
dents is readily apparent. Students who fall within the traditional age range
(18-22) are in a transition between adolescence and adulthood. The forma-
tion of an adequate self is at a critical stage during late adolescence and
young adulthood (Erikson, 1968). It is at this stage that we stand apart from
our families for the first time and begin to live a life of our own. There are
a number of potential crisis points during this process of attaining independ-
ence and identity formation. Such crises can be understood as threats to
self-adequacy and self-worth. It can be stated therefore that 'what is at
stake' - using Lazarus' (1976) terminology - for students under stress, is
their sense of self-adequacy (Combs eta!., 1976), which comes under threat
when handling the core developmental tasks of identity formation (see
 178 Aherne

Erikson, 1968). The relationship between student development and student

stress can perhaps be best expressed in the form of two key questions
regarding identity formation, namely: "Who am I?" (Erikson, 1968) -
which represents the developmental task, and "Am I adequate?"- which
represents the stressful component of the developmental task (Aherne,
1996a; 1996b; 1997).
Student development theory, as postulated by Chickering and Reisser
(1993) provides a useful unifying framework within which many of
students' personal and developmental factors can be accommodated in an
effort to understand what is at stake for students under stress. Chickering
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and Reisser have identified seven vectors of development facing late

adolescent/young adult University students, namely: developing compe-
tence, managing emotions, moving through autonomy toward independ-
ence, developing mature interpersonal relationships, establishing identity,
developing purpose and integrity. Grayson (1989) goes on to refer to the
four key developmental tasks of college students as identity, autonomy,
intimacy and achievement. Santiago-Rivera, Gard and Bernstein (1999)
have been the first to study the relationship between student development
tasks and student stress. In their research they sought to identify which
central issues (i.e. developmental tasks) were most connected to student
stressful life events. Results from their study indicated that achievement,
intimacy and autonomy were the most important issues in this regard. The
present study aims to build on this initiative and help to further understand
students, stressful experiences.
The present study was a qualitative investigation of student stress,
based on detailed interviews with a sample of27 students attending an Irish
technological third level institute of approximately 5,000 students. The aim
of the study was to examine the relevance of a developmental approach to
understanding the nature of student stress. In particular the study aims to
establish 'what is at stake' for students under stress in the context of their
developmental needs. Students reported experiences of stress were inter-
preted in the context of a developmental framework. The self-adequacy
model of Combs et a1. (1976) , as outlined above, underpins this explora-
tion.

METHOD
Participants
A sample of 27 students was selected purposefully rather than randomly
(Patton, 1990) and were not intended to be statistically representative of the
college student popUlation. Instead, the participants consisted of a small
group of what were considered to be information-rich cases (Patton, 1990).
Fifteen students attending the counselling service were chosen because
 Student stress 179

they were considered likely to be experiencing some stress. A random

selection of twelve students from the general college population was also
included. Participants, 18 male and 12 female, were selected from two
different sources, therefore, to ensure that a broad database of potential
student stressful experiences was obtained. Participants were all under-
graduate students ranging in age from 17 to 22 years.

Interviewing procedure
Each student was invited to attend for at least two interviews, with some
students attending for a third interview where feasible. Interviews were
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held at the beginning, middle and end of the final term of the academic year.
There were approximately four weeks between each set of interviews.
Interviews were carried out by the two resident student counsellors at the
college in order to facilitate the establishment of rapport between inter-
viewer and interviewee. The students reported on their present stressful
experiences, but the interview was not used to explore these experiences
therapeutically. An informal conversational approach was used by the
interviewer, with questions emerging from the immediate context of the
interview as considered appropriate by the interviewer. Students com-
pleted the College Adjustment Rating Scale (Zitzow, 1984) beforehand to
guide interview questions. This is a 100 item questionnaire requiring each
item to be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 for severity of stress experienced. Items
are also placed in four areas of stress, namely academic, family, personal
and social. Interview questions were mainly aimed at eliciting how students
felt about the various stresses they were experiencing at the time. Further
questions regarding opinions, attitudes and background information were
asked for clarification. Questions were open ended in as much as was
possible and appropriate.

RESULTS

Sixty-two interviews were held altogether with the 27 students and a total
of approximately 24 hours of interviewing was recorded. Interviews varied
in length from 15 minutes to 50 minutes depending on the nature of the
stressful experiences being shared by the student. The transcripts of
interviews with the 27 students provided the raw data for qualitative
analysis. The data gathered for each student consisted of an accumulation
of all three of their interviews rather than treating each interview separately,
since comparison between interviews was not a component of the study.
The analysis of the data consisted of reducing the vast amount of
data into meaningful units for further interpretation. The aim of the analysis
was to put order and sense on the raw data collected, using a developmentall
 180 Aherne

self-adequacy account of student stress as a framework.

Stages in analysis of data

Stage 1 - Transcribing interview tapes.

Stage 2 - Editing transcripts to reduce the data to a more manageable size

for later categorisation.
The aim in this second stage was to identify what were considered to be the
most important aspects of each interview. As Marshall ( 1981 ) points out,
chunks of meaning were fairly obvious and stood out clearly from their
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context. The method of reduction chosen was for three raters to independ-
ently identify and underline those key elements of the transcript which they
considered most loaded with the meaning of what was being said by each
student. All underlined statements were included in further analysis and
were considered in the context within which they appeared in the transcript
rather than being treated as independent statements in isolation .. No single
unit of analysis was prescribed (see Jones, 1985; Marshall, 1981; Patton,
1990) i.e. the key statements to be chosen by raters could vary from being
words to phrases to sentences.

Stage 3: Categorising of data

Categorisation was needed to order the data which emerged from the
editing process, since without categories there is chaos (jones, 1985). The
aim of the present study was to examine the stress experienced by students,
rather than the extent to which students cope with their stress. Category
headings were, therefore, generated on the basis of demands inferred from
the data irrespective of how the student was deemed to be coping with those
demands. Using the constant comparative method of analysis developed by
Glaser and Strauss (1967), an initial list of over 360 potential categories was
generated collaboratively by two raters. Many of the categories of stress
generated in this initial list seemed to be quite similar and in order to make
the categories more manageable for the later stages of analysis these
categories were grouped according to similarity of demands so that even-
tually, a limited number of 49 categories were agreed upon which it was felt
best represented the data (see Note). Validity testing involved a third rater
independently rating the same statements using the final list of categories
that had been generated. Where disagreements occurred in choice of
category, both category options were included so that in some cases more
than one category was allocated to a specific statement. This approach to
analysis allowed the inclusion of as much data as possible for across subject
analysis.
 Student stress 181

Across-subjects analysis of patterns and linkages amongst categories

of stressors
Generating a list of student stressors or demands is similar to what has been
carried out in many of the life events studies based on the seminal work of
Holmes and Rahe (1967). The present study takes the analysis a stage
further so as to generate a deeper understanding of the stress experienced
by the students and to identify what is at stake for them within a develop-
mental framework. Establishing interconnections among stressors, where
appropriate, can provide a more complete understanding of the students'
experience than the discussion of individual stressors on their own. The
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categories of demands generated from the current data were used therefore
as 'building blocks' within individual student profiles.
All interviews examined academic, social and family aspects of
student stress. The data generated from individual students indicates that
a triangle of stress very often exists between what is happening for the
studen t academicall y , socially and in the fami Iy. Individual cases show that
rather than these domains of stress being independent of one another, very
often they impact on one another in a variety of ways.
The across-subject analysis of data consisted of reading the material
thoroughly several times, summarising each case based on the identified
key statements and then comparing themes that emerged from each indi-
vidual case with other cases. Similarities and patterns in key areas were
identified across 14 of the individual cases to confirm the existence of
interconnections amongst stressors and to suggest some general patterns of
student stress based on these interconnections.
These patterns, outlined in more detail below, include
overidentification with academic success, social inadequacy and dealing
with parental conflict. With regard to the remaining cases, one student
reported the recent death of his brother as his stress, three students reported
career dissatisfaction as their source of stress, one student focussed on a key
decision issue and one student highlighted the stress of family role respon-
sibilities. In these six cases there was less evidence of interconnecting
stressors. Seven students reported not experiencing any significant degree
of stress currently in their lives.

Pattern No.I: Over identification with academic success (n = 5)

Certain students had an over-concentration on one aspect of their identity,
namely academic achievement. The question "Who am I"? (Erikson, 1968)
was dealt with by them in terms of academic grades. These students who
over-identify with academic success tended to lack social skills and self-
confidence. For these students "Who am I ?" was typically reflected in "I
am my Q.c.A. (i.e. Grades)". In other words, here are students for whom
 182 Aherne

their identity struggle has centred on the need to achieve and be competent.
Self-adequacy for these students has been sought through academic achieve-
ment and intellectual competence. Over-identification can also have
resulted in either a heightened fear of failure in examinations or a lack of
motivation when the student realises that academic success is not sufficient
for personal satisfaction and happiness.
The "Over-identifiers" do not appear to have exercised their need to
achieve or to be competent merely for its own sake, but also for extrinsic
motivating factors such as the approval of parents and acceptance by others.
These students reported a lack of adequate social skills and sought compen-
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sation for the lack of social connection through academic achievement. At

the same time they had used the excuse of overwork for not socialising. This
imbalance in lifestyle is considered unhealthy, with investment in intellec-
tual advancement poor compensation for the neglect of emotional and
intimacy needs.

Pattern No. 2: Social inadequacy (n 6) =

There were certain students in the present sample who felt that they did not
fit in with their peers. These students very much wanted to belong and to
be close to others. Academic success was not their priority. Typically,
these students had poor social skills and reported feeling isolated. Self-
adequacy was sought through belonging, fitting in and being accepted by
others. In each of these cases, identity issues were centred on the student's
need for intimacy more than on the need to achieve academic success. The
socially inadequate students differed from 'the academic over-identifiers',
in that they talked more about their loneliness and isolation whereas the first
group talked more about their fear of academic failure. Both groups,
however, lacked self-confidence, had poor social skills and seemed to lack
strong positive relationships with their parents.
Significantly, all of the students representing this pattern in the
present sample were male (note: two-thirds of the sample were male), while
five of them had been in counselling. Fitting-in with peers appears to be
particularly stressful for these male students. This stress may be due to a
difficulty for men in acknowledging their need for connection and relation-
ships, as it is now recognised that women develop more natural1y in terms
of connectedness (Gilligan, 1982).

Pattern No.3: Conflict with parents (n 4) =

Some of the students came from difficult family situations and were
involved in conflict of one sort or another with their parents (Lopez, 1991)
and were either aligned with or overinvolved with one parent to the
exclusion of the other parent. While for all students a secure home base is
 Student stress 183

a necessary prerequisite for confidence in dealing with life outside of the

home, in certain cases struggles within the family had become the main
focus of concern. In each of these cases, the student had over-invested in
examination success as a means of pleasing a parent. This over-investment
resulted in a heightened fear of failure for the student, confirming Lopez'
(1991) predictions that triangulation results in greater academic related
stress for the student. A poor relationship with one parent was noticeable
in each case, with the student in each case aligned with the parent of the
opposite sex to themselves.
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DISCUSSION

The present study aimed to clarify 'what is at stake' for students under
stress, since Lazarus (1976) had identified 'what is at stake' as a core aspect
of stress within an interactional model of stress. The results from the
present study make two significant contributions to stress research. First,
they establish the central nature of the self within an interactional model of
stress. Second, regarding the development of self for young adults, the
present study identifies the threat (Le. what is at stake) presented to students
in their struggle to develop a sense of autonomy and inclusion. Both
contributions will now be discussed in more detail.

Incorporating the self within a developmental model of stress

A developmental model of stress locates the self at the centre of human
well-being. For human development to occur, the self must be adequately
maintained (Combs et al., 1976). Analyses of the stresses experienced by
the present sample of students reveals a group of young people for whom
self-confidence and their sense of self-adequacy is poor. The struggle to
master developmental tasks, so as to meet important needs, has been shown
to be hampered for these students. For many of the students in the present
sample, the external environment was experienced as threatening because
of their internal sense of inadequacy either in their academic ability (pattern
no. 1) or their ability to develop relationships with others (pattern no. 2).
Because ofthe influence of these internal factors, the interactionist perspec-
tive in future stress research must prioritise personal ownership of stress
(see Paul, 1980).

Autonomy, inclusion and student stress

In the present study, student stress has been explored in the context of
student development and its inherent threats and challenges. The range of
developmental tasks facing students, as outlined by Chickering and Reisser
() 993), has already been referred to. The present study indicates that in
 184 Aherne

terms of student stress it is particularly important to understand the

development of the self in the context of the polarities of autonomy and
inclusion or independence and relationship. Numerous theorists have
agreed that the developing self can experience its existence in two forms:
as (a) being a member of a group, being in relationship and connection with
others and (b) the progressive development of individuality in terms of
clarity, achievement and authenticity (Kegan, 1982; Rowe, 1987). It is not
difficult to identify these forms of existence in the experiences of the
students interviewed for the present study. The patterns of student stress
relating to academic over-identification (pattern no. I) and social inad-
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equacy (pattern no. 2) in particular reflect the difficulties encountered by

students with their experiences of independence and relationship respec-
tively. The autonomy/relatedness dualism remains a central problem for
contemporary developmental theorists (Hoffman, 1992). The present
study highlights the importance of these polarities (i.e. independence and
inclusion) in the development and related stresses of young adults (Rice et
aI., 1995). Results from the present study identify the stresses for both male
and female students in developing independence from home, so as to
function as autonomous adults (see pattern no.3). Developing competence
and achieving academic success is a means by which some students can
establish their autonomy and independence. Stress for students also occurs
where they do not experience intimacy in their lives due to their lack of self-
confidence in forming close relationships (see pattern no. 2). In the present
sample, the male students, in particular, seem to encounter considerable
difficulties in meeting their needs for intimacy. Male students would
appear to struggle with wanting to be intimate while lacking the necessary
social skills and self-confidence to do so. What is significant about these
men is that they do not conform to the stereotypical male image of acquiring
a social identity through separateness and achievement (Kegan, 1982).
Based on the present results, some men encounter great difficulty in
acquiring a sense of belonging and inclusion, confirming Gilligan 's (1982)
theory that the development of inclusion comes more naturally for women
than for men. Lacking confidence in their ability to develop relationships
and perceiving the high value society places on academic accomplishment,
some students over-identify with academic success as their means of
psychological survival (pattern no. I). A false sense of belonging can be
attained through achievement - acquiring social status rather than providing
any personally meaningful validation.
Results from the present study suggest that what is at stake for male
and female students under stress may differ in some respects. The
differences represent a fundamental dichotomy that is present for all of us,
between autonomy and inclusion. By incorporating a developmental
 Student stress 185

aspect to our understanding of stress, gender differences in the experience

of stress can be highlighted further.
Both Grayson (1989) and the Group for the Advancement of
Psychiatry (1983) have proposed that student developmental tasks can be
incorporated into the three main areas of identity, separation and intimacy.
The present study emphasises the importance for students of the need to
achieve, as a further key developmental task. It seems, in fact, that identity
formation (Erikson, 1963) is the basic issue for young people, encompass-
ing three developmental tasks: achievement, separation and intimacy.
Recent findings by Santiago Rivera, Gard and Bemstein (1999) on central
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issues in the lives of students confirm these results. More research is now
needed to further examine these dimensions.
A student development approach can be usefully applied in psycho-
therapy, whereby crises are treated as opportunities for growth (Margolis,
1976). The identity crisis oflate adolescence (Erikson, 1968), can therefore
be considered an important developmental opportunity. Whitaker (1992)
argues that students become empowered when they are enabled to take
seriously their own developmental needs. This empowerment consists of
understanding themselves, finding a better sense of direction, and actively
collaborating in their own therapy. Whitaker (1992) points out that college
counsellors who are attuned to students' special developmental needs, as
well as being suitably trained and experienced as therapists, will be able to
recognise and utilize the many advantages of a developmental model.
Results from the present study suggest that, in particular, counsellors ought
to recognise and understand the importance of students' need for relation-
ship, intimacy and inclusion alongside their need to achieve. Further
research is needed to explore gender differences in this regard.

NOTE

The full list of 49 categories of demands (stressors) generated from key

statements is available from the author.

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