Relationship Between Academic Stress and Generalized Anxiety Among Private and Government High School Students

Abstract

Academic stress and generalized anxiety are two important psychological issues for adolescent students, and both are linked to students' academic achievement and psychological health. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between academic stress and generalized anxiety among students studying in public and private high schools in Pakistan through a quantitative correlational study. The overall number of students are 400 between the ages of 11 and 16 years. The research draws on the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping of (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and the Cognitive Model of Anxiety by (Beck & Clark, 1997) which can describe how academic pressure may impact on student anxiety. Instruments for data collection are Academic Stress Scale and anxiety subscale of DASS-21 and statistical analysis is carried out by Pearson Product-Moment Correlation and Independent Samples t-test using IBM SPSS Statistics. The study included 400 participants. Results showed that the mean score of General Anxiety (GA) was 25.33, while Academic Stress (AS) had a mean score of 64.88. A weak positive and non-significant relationship was found between GA and AS (r = .067, p > .05), indicating that academic stress was not significantly associated with general anxiety among participants. The results further showed a weak and non-significant positive relationship between academic stress and general anxiety among participants.