Stress in high school students in Bangkok being tutored for national admission examination.

Abstract

Background : At present tutoring for national admission examination creates tremendous stress in high school students in Thai society. Expectation to be admitted into major universities or institutions of their desire, gender, individual expectation, parental expectation, period of studying and study plan all of these may contribute to stress factors.

Objective : To study the stress level and the relation between stress factors and causes of stress in high school students tutoring for national admission examination in Bangkok.

Design : A cross-sectional Study.

Setting : Wannasorn Building, which is the biggest tutoring building in Bangkok.

Materials and Methods : Data were collected from 384 high school students in Bangkok who were being tutored for national admission examination in the first semester of academic year 2014 at Wannasorn Building. The instruments were: 1) Personal Data Questionnaire; 2) Suanprung Stress Test-20. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, i.e. ,percentage, proportion, standard deviation and mean ± SD. Inferential statistics used to examine the relationship between stress level and stress factors of high school students were Independent sample t-test, One-way ANOVA, multiple linear regression, regression analysis and Pearson correlation.

Results : The study found that most of high school students being tutored for national admission examination in Bangkok had high stress level (48.2%), individual expectations (70.3%), parental expectations (68.5%) had moderate level. The personal factors predicting stress level of high school students were individual expectations, parental expectations and gender. These found individual expectations (p <0.01), parental expectations (p <0.05) and gender (p <0.05)

Conclusion : In this study, most high school students being tutored for national admission examination in Bangkok had high stress level. Gender, individual expectation and parental expectation were related to stress level.