IMPACT OF ACADEMIC STRESS ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL THREE STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

The research work sought to investigate the impact of academic stress on junior secondary school three (3) students in Oredo Local Government Area, Edo State. In order to effectively carryout this study four research questions were raised; question one and two were answered while questions three and four were hypothesized. The study adopted the descriptive survey design and the population of the study consists of junior secondary school three students from selected public and private junior secondary schools in Oredo Local Government Area, Edo State. The sample was 100 junior secondary school three students purposively selected from two public and two private junior secondary school three in Oredo Local Government Area, Edo State. The research instrument was a questionnaire which was validated by the researcher’s supervisor and two others at the Institute of Education, and the reliability was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha statistics and gave the value 0.84. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for research questions one and two, while the hypotheses were tested using independent sample t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings that emerged revealed that the level of academic stress on Junior Secondary School three (3) students in Oredo Local Government was high, with the most prevalent as the high academic expectations from parents and others. In addition, there was no significance difference in the level of academic stress between male and female students. However, a significant difference exists in the level of academic stress between public and private junior secondary school three students. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that schools should introduce and implement stress management programmes within the school curriculum to equip students with effective coping mechanisms and strategies to handle academic stress.