What Stresses University Students

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What Stresses University Students:
An Interview Investigation of the
Demands of Tertiary Studies
Vicki Bitsika,1 Christopher F. Sharpley2 and Vira Rubenstein1
1 Bond University, Australia
2 Centre

for Bioactive Discovery in Health and Ageing, University of New England, Australia

A ltbough several previous scales have been developed to measure the presence and
effects of the stressful demands encountered by university students,
/ A
most of these have been validated with samples drawn from US uni-A. . A .
versities, commonly using only undergraduate psychology students.
In addition, many of the items used are from scales designed for
application within general adult populations, with little focus upon
the specific stressors met by students. In order to identify what are

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the major changes these students encounter that they Find stressful, a
sample of 32 university students from different degree areas within
an Australian university was individually interviewed using a stan¬
dardised protocol. Results indicated that (unlike US data) these stu¬
dents found dislocation to family, friend and partner relationships
most stressful, followed by the time demands of study and financial
restrictions. Limitations of the study, future research directions and
implications for counsellors are discussed.
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KEYWORDS: student, lifestyle change, depression, causes

Depression adversely effects several aspects of individuals’ lives, including physical
health, relationships and cognitive performance (Druss 8c Rosenheck, 1999; Judd,
Paulus, Wells, 8c Rapaport, 1996; Lyness et al., 2006; Nutt, 2004), and is the
major contributor to the total disease burden (Ustun, Ayuso-Mateos, Chatterji,
Mathers, 8c Murray, 2004). Data from Europe show that 13% of people experi¬
ence a major depressive episode at some time, slightly less than in the United States
(17%; Alonso et al., 2004; Kessler et al., 1994; Kessler, Bergiand, Borges, Nock, 8c
Wang, 2005), but higher than reported in Australia (8%; Hawthorne, Goldney, 8c
Taylor, 2008). These data lend support to some predictions that depression will
become the second leading cause of mental illness by 2020 (Murray 8c Lopez,
1997; WHO, 2001). Although genetic influences play a major role in the develop¬
ment of depression (Hettema et al., 2006; Lopez-Leon et al., 2007), one of the

Addressfor correspondence: Professor Chris Sharpley, PO Box 378, Coolangatta, Qld, 4225, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected]

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Australian Journal of Guidance & Counselling

Volume 20 Number 1 2010 A pp. 41-54

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Vicki Bitsika, Christopher F. Sharpley and Vira Rubenstein

strongest predictors of this disorder is stress in the form
across a range of areas (Mirescu 8c Gould, 2006).

42

of demanding challenges

One particularly stressful period of life is early adulthood, during which many
people undertake the additional burden of tertiary study, contributing to the rela¬
tively high incidence of depression among university students (McLennan, 1992;
Tanaka 8c Huba, 1987). For example, Alloy et al. (2006) reported rates of up to
16% for major depression and 45% for minor depression during the first 3 years
of study among students without a previous history of depression, and Kitzrow
(2003) found that 28% of freshmen were overwhelmed and 8% were depressed.
The incidence of these difficulties may also be increasing (DeStefano, Mellott, 8c
Petersen, 2001; Gallagher, Gill, 8c Sysko, 2000). Of particular concern are the find¬
ings reported by Tjia, Givens and Shea (2005) that, of the 15% of students in a
medical school who were depressed and the 20% who reported suicidal ideation,
only 27% had received treatment for their mental state. Higher levels of depression
among university students can also adversely affect their academic performance
(Dyrbye, Thomas 8c Shanafelt, 2006), compounding the overall stressful outcome.
These issues are of relevance to university counsellors and justify further investiga¬
tion of the relationships between stressors arising from university study and depres¬
sion experienced by university students.
Some of those stressors include the transition from home to independent living,
the multiple challenges of new academic, financial, social and sexual demands, as
well as sleep deprivation (Scott 6c O’Hara, 1993). Stressors which have been
shown to be linked to depression among university students are: low self-esteem
and self-efficacy (Oliver 8c Pauli, 2006), poor time management and leisure satis¬
faction (Misra 8c McKean, 2000), irrational beliefs and alcohol use (Camatta 8c
Nagoshi, 2006), parental or partner abuse (Silvern et al., 1995), self-concealment,
social self-efficacy and stress in adjusting to a new culture (Constantine, Okazaki,
8c Utsey, 2004), and suicidal behaviour (Kisch, Leino 8c Silverman, 2005),
although some of these factors may not be caused by university study alone.
Attempts to identify the specific university-study stressors that contribute most
to student depression have included the development of several scales. For
example, the Inventory of College Students’ Recent Life Experiences (Kohn,
Lafreniere, 8c Gurevich, 1990, 1991) contained 49 items and was evaluated on 208
undergraduate psychology students in the United States, and the Brief College
Student Hassles Scale (Blankstein 8c Flett, 1992), with 20 items, was developed on
408 undergraduate psychology students. While these scales may be valuable, their
generalisability to other non-psychology student populations remains to be veri¬
fied. Another similar scale, the College Undergraduate Stress Scale (Renner 8c
Mackin, 1998), was normed on a ‘large general psychology class’ (p. 47) at a
‘state-assisted comprehensive university of approximately 12,000 students in the
eastern United States’ (p. 47). However, many of the stressors tapped by items in
that scale were not due to university study per se (e.g., the seven highest stress
rating items were: ‘Being raped’, ‘Finding out that you are HIV-positive’, ‘Being
accused of rape’, ‘Death of a dose friend’, ‘Death of a close family member’,
‘Contracting a sexually transmitted disease [other than AIDS)’, ‘Concerns about
being pregnant’). In fact, of the 51 items in this scale, only 21 were clearly a result
of being at university (e.g., ‘Finals week’, ‘Flunking a class’, ‘Confrontations with

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University Stressors

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professors’). The Hassles Assessment Scale for Students in College (Sarafino 8c
Ewing, 1999) consisted of 54 items designed to measure frequency and severity of
daily hassles, plus students’ rumination about those hassles. Evaluated on 132
undergraduate US psychology students, factor analysis indicated that the 54 items
were independent of each other, leaving the structure of the scale uncertain, as well
as having been developed from responses of psychology students alone. More
recently, the University Students Hassles Scale (Pett 8c Johnson, 2005) was derived
from the 117-item Hassles Scale (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, 8c Lazarus, 1981) and
reduced to 35 items via data collected from administration to a sample of
University of Utah students and subsequent psychometric analysis. (Of interest, 67
of the original 117 items were deleted because students reported that these items
were not relevant to them.) Using those 35 items plus 84 generated from openended responses by 965 students from the same university, a final 75-item scale
that comprises 11 subscales (time pressures, finances, race/ethnicity, gender, friend¬
ships, traffic, safety, employment, physical appearance, parental expectation) was
produced. However, as well as being developed from a sample drawn from a single
university, the original item bank was from a scale for adults in general, and not
specific to university students or the kinds of study-based stressors they experi¬
enced. Finally, the College Student Stress Scale (Feldt, 2008) used 11 items (devel¬
oped on 273 first-year students in the United States), and measured students’ levels
of ‘perceived stress and control’ (p. 855) rather than the actual events/challenges
which students encountered and which caused them to feel stressed. These scales
may be of limited generalisability to the wider population of Australian university
students (as well as non-psychology students from the United States), particularly
those which include items concerned with racial/ethnic issues that are specifically
relevant to the United States. In addition, the items on some scales that were drawn
from non-student samples may not always apply to university students and the
kinds of stressors they encounter.
Therefore, it may be unreliable to use these scales when investigating the inci¬
dence of university-related stressors among Australian university students, particu¬
larly for the purposes of identifying those events/challenges which students
encounter and which contribute to the development of depression. This has led to
an alternative approach that focuses upon the links between the onset of events
that are specifically related to university study and the later development of depres¬
sion among student samples. For example, Keller and Nesse (2005) focused their
research upon the match between a set of categories of stressors, which they
termed ‘precipitants’ (p. 27), and the presence of six subgroups of depressive symp¬
toms assessed via the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Results
indicated that different stressors were associated with different depressive symp¬
toms (e.g., social losses were associated with crying and arousal, and failure to
reach a goal was associated with fatigue and pessimism). These findings were repli¬
cated (Keller 8c Nesse, 2006) and extended to include nine sets of stressors (Keller,
Neale, 8c Kendler, 2007) experienced by university students. However, the focus of
Keller et al.’s investigations was upon categories of stressors (such as death of a
loved one, failure, romantic loss, inability to cope, social isolation and winter)
rather than the particular effects of the specific events which students experience.
As has been shown previously, not all (assumed) stressors have negative effects

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Australian Journal of Guidance & Cotnsofing

Volume 20 NumUr 1 2010

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Vicki Bitsika, Christophef F. Sharpley and Vira Rubenstein

44

upon those who experience them, and some even have reportedly positive effects
(Sharpley, Bitsika, & Christie, 2009; Sharpley, Tanti, Stone, & Lothian, 2004),
thus challenging the validity of grouping many stressors into categories and assum¬
ing that increased frequency of these stressors will be more likely to be associated
with depression.
Therefore, in order to identify a list of university study-based stressors that were
linked with the increased likelihood of depression among students who experienced
them, and as an initial step in understanding the potential roles of a range of spe¬
cific events and experiences in the development of anxiety and depression among
Australian university students, a research project was undertaken in 2008 to (a)
gather an estimate of the kinds of events and experiences that university students
undergo by interviewing a sample of students and asking them about the kinds of
changes they had experienced as a result of undertaking university study; (b) form
these data into a questionnaire that could be administered to a sample of sufficient
size and statistical power so as to provide psychometric data regarding the scale
itself and also indicate which events and experiences were most powerfully associ¬
ated with anxiety and depression. The second aspect of that project has been pub¬
lished (Bitsika, Sharpley, & Hartley, 2010), and the present article reports on the
initial gathering of student responses to individual interviews about the kinds of
events and experiences they met as a result of undertaking university study.
Therefore, the present report presents data about the kinds of stressful events and
life changes brought about by university study and which were rated by students as
constituting either (a) the loss of previously-available sources of pleasure or
support and (b) the onset of relatively aversive events/challenges, both of which
were caused by undertaking university study. These two kinds of events have been
shown to reliably predict depression among a range of samples (e.g., Dougher &
Hackbert, 1994; Ferster, 1973; Kanter, Busch, Weeks & Landes, 2008). In order to
gather initial data that were as close as possible to the students’ own experiences
(rather than drawing items from studies with other samples), an individual inter¬
view protocol was used to identify in students’ own words the kinds of changes
and challenges that they ascribed specifically to university life and study demands
rather than to other life events or challenges not associated with university study.
This methodology enabled the current study to be focussed on the individual
student’s experience of university study per se, rather than other life stressors that
are not necessarily an outcome of university study.

Method
Participants

Thirty-two undergraduate students (14 male) at a university on the eastern coast of
Australia participated as volunteers in a study of ‘the kinds of changes that have
happened to your life as a result of university study’. Ages ranged from 19 to 53
years (M = 27.6 years, median = 24.0 years, mode = 21.0 years, SD = 9.56 years)
and participants were drawn in similar numbers from the various discipline areas
of the university, including humanities, law, science, business, IT, health.

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University Stressors

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Measures
A detailed interview protocol1 was developed by the first two authors and adminis¬
tered individually by the third author during the last four months of 2008. This
interview protocol gathered background information about the student’s age,
gender, living situation, area of study, whether the student was full- or part-time,
and the stage of their degree they had reached, so that a representative sample
might be identified. The second section of the interview protocol asked about the
student’s work and recreational history prior to study (occupational demand,
enjoyment) and any positive or negative changes that had occurred in employment
as a result of study. ‘Changes’ were defined as ‘major alterations in your life that
have caused you personal stress’. The third section of the interview asked students
about the effects of study upon specific losses of previously available sources of
pleasure and/or onset of aversive events in the areas of physical wellness and
energy level, recreation and free-time activity, emotional status, cognitive perform¬
ance, relationships, and income and buying capacity. The fourth section asked stu¬
dents to identify the three most powerful positive and negative events/changes that
had occurred to them and how much they believed they (the students) had altered
as a result of those events/changes, scored on a 5-point scale from 1 = No change
at all, 3 = Moderate change and 5 = Very great deal of change. Finally, students
were asked to identify the most-missed activity/source of pleasure that they had
lost because of study, and the most aversive change that had occurred to them since
studying. Interviews were about 45 min in length.
Procedure

Following advertisement (notices, announcements in classes), individual students
were recruited and interviewed in a room designated for this purpose on campus.
After the interview, each student was invited to ask any questions about the study
and these were answered by the interviewer. These procedures were approved by
the university’s Human Research Ethics Committee as part of a larger investigation
of the links between stressors and depression.
45 4

Results
Background Variables

Eighteen (56%) participants were undergraduate students, and 27 (84%) were
studying fulltime. Thirteen were in their first semester, 5 in their second, 3 in their
third, 4 in their fourth, 5 in their fifth and 2 in their last semester. Five participants
lived alone in university residences, 8 were married or in de facto relationships and
lived with their partners, 5 were single and living with their parents, and 14 were
single and living with other people. Three students were Asian, three were
European, two were from North America and the remainder was from Australia.
These data, and the age and gender data mentioned in the Methods section, plus
the sampling of participants across all degree areas within the university in similar
proportions, suggested that the sample was representative of almost all the back¬
ground variables needed to ensure that the data from the interview could be gener¬
alised to the general student body of the university.
Australian Journal ol Guidance & Counseling

Volli™ ® Number 12010

Vicki Bitsika, Christopher F. Sharpley and Vira Rubenstein

Work History, Changes Due to Study
Fourteen participants had previously been students, either at university or second¬
ary school, and the major occupational changes they experienced had been in terms
of less free time and lower income from casual employment. Three participants had
been teachers, had left their jobs and were enjoying the extra time for study but
also found the loss of income difficult. Other occupations prior to study included:
fire-fighter, manager, psychologist, customer service manager, nurse, child-care
worker, travel agent and retail services. Of the 18 participants who had been
employed either fulltime or part-time, only three reported that the change from
their previous occupation was completely positive (because they had grown tired of
that occupation), and the remainder reported both positive changes in the form of
extra time for study but also negative changes from reduced income.

Recreation/Social Activities
All participants reported that they had less time to engage in their previous recre¬
ational activities but about half of the sample indicated that this was a positive
change because it enabled them to spend more time on their studies, while the
remaining participants found the reduction in social activities unpleasant.
Effects of Study
Physical: Lost sources of pleasure included less: energy; sex with partner; loss of
fitness and body shape, sleep, exercise and diet, wellness, relaxation, stable body
weight; home cooking; and generally living a healthy lifestyle. Gained aversive
experiences were: extra time allocated to study and workload; increased drinking
(causing fatigue and hangovers) and smoking; becoming unfit; eating poorer food
and junk food, increased coffee and chocolate intake, irregular meals; hours
working on a computer; weight fluctuation, skin disorders; general fatigue, inter¬
rupted sleep; headaches, coughs, colds and ‘flu; increased stress levels, anxiety and
panic attacks about study demands.

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Activity: Participants reported that they had reduced time with partner, friends and
family; TV time, exercise time, cooking time, general recreation time and reading

46

for relaxation, physical activity, time alone, gardening, social activities, shopping,
and general free time to pursue recreational and sporting activities. Aversive
changes included: greater work/study load (very commonly reported); changes in
activity types; increased use of computers; more time spent traveling; more time
alone; and pressure to study and do well.
Emotional: Reduced emotionally pleasant activities/sources were: patience, calmness
(very commonly reported); enjoyment of support from friends and family, work
camaraderie; feelings of control; enjoying parental contact and time with children;
personal comfort and feelings of competence and success, feeling productive, selfefficacy; security from familiar surroundings; and feelings of certainty about the
future. New unpleasant emotional experiences included: greater stress (common);
competitiveness; anxiety about the future and new social contacts; guilty feelings
about not studying enough; homesickness; general anxiety and anxiety about
increased workload and time deadlines for assignments (commonly reported); worry
about finances; loneliness; boredom from hours sitting; self-doubt.

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University Stressors

Cognitive: The loss of pleasant cognitive attributes/experiences were reported by
only five participants and included: concentration, ability to focus and think clearly
and planning ability. New aversive cognitive experiences were reported by seven
students and were: difficulty in decision-making, increased need to plan ahead,
having to make more independent decisions, ‘going blank’.

Relationship: Lost pleasant relationship experiences were reported by 30 of the 32
participants and the most common of these were: reduced communication with
partner and children, reduced support from family, partner and friends, less access
to friends of the same age; lowered level of calm and understanding from partner,
less stability in the relationship; fewer opportunities for socialising, and difficulties
in making new friendships at university. Aversive events included marital/de facto
relationship breakdown (reported by 5 participants); absence of friends and family,
irritability with friends and family, and deteriorating relationships with children.

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Material: As might be expected from the data reported above regarding reductions
in time spent at income-producing employment, the major lost source of enjoyment
in this area was reduced income and savings, shopping and ability to purchase
luxury items; reduced standard of living and travel and recreational activities; and
compromised financial independence. Aversive experiences that had occurred as a
result of studying included having to use savings to support study; taking out a
student loan; having to borrow money from parents; difficulty in balancing a home
budget; being unemployed; and the costs of education (textbooks, and so on).
Overall Level of Change Experienced and Nature of That Change
Using the scale of 1 (No change at all), 3 ( Moderate change) and 5 (Very great
deal of change) mentioned in the Methods section, participants rated ‘the degree
of change you have noticed in yourself’ at an average of 3.59, ranging from 1 to
5, with a median and mode of 4. When asked to describe those positive and neg¬
ative changes in their own words, participants reported the following as their
major changes.
Major positive changed. The major positive changes that students reported were:
having a new purpose in life; enjoyment in studying; increased self-esteem; using
one’s ability to think in new ways; better decision-making and time management;
enjoyment of the course content; being on campus; developing new skills; living
independently; greater recognition by family of one’s worth; finding a love of learn¬
ing; meeting like-minded people; not having to go to work; greater freedom;
meeting a new challenge; being more organised; increased self-reliance; healthier
lifestyle (exercise, diet); more socialising; and commitment to deadlines and devel¬
oping a more productive workstyle.
Major negative changes. The major negative changes reported by the sample were:

absence of family and friends; increased drinking and missing classes due to hang¬
overs; costs; decreased exercise and healthy eating; loss of income and financial
freedom; leaving previous job; high study demands; fatigue, lost sleep, headaches;
anxiety; stress to succeed; decreased recreational time; fear of the future; unstable
home life: deteriorating mental health; increased costs; weight gain; less time with
children; and damage to marital relationship.
Australian Journal of Guidance & CoLmolSng

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Vicki Bitsika, Christopher F. Sharpley and Vira Rubenstein

Major enjoyable

jourceo

loot, major averjive changes gained. Table 1 shows the previ¬

ously available sources of enjoyment and pleasure that participants reported they
had lost, plus the new aversive events/changes that they encountered as a result of
undertaking university study. These data suggest that the loss of contact with
friends and family support was the most common lost positive, followed by reduc¬
tions in free time due to study demands. These findings were mirrored by the data
showing the major new aversive changes that participants experienced, plus con¬
cerns about their diet, health and fitness. Other issues included financial problems,
fatigue and sleeping difficulties, fear of failing a subject and marital/relationship
breakdown due to study pressure and mismatch between the participant’s goals
and those of their partner.

m Discussion
Overall, these 32 students reported that the major changes they experienced as a
result of undertaking university study were concerned with their personal relation¬
ships with partners, family and friends. Of those who had been previously in full¬
time or part-time/casual employment, the loss of employment income was largely
balanced by increased free time for study. The allocation of that extra time to the
demands of study appeared to also cut into previously available time for recreation
and socialising with family and friends, although about half of the participants also
commented that they found this new demand (i.e., study) to be satisfying to them.
However, when the effects of study upon various aspects of their lifestyle were
examined in more detail, participants consistently reported the loss of previously

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TABLE 1
Major Lost Positive and Gained Aversive Events/Changes in Participants' Environments
Which had an Effect on Their Performance

Lost positive charges/events
Time with friends
Family time

Free time
Parents
Financial freedom
Sleeping

13
10
6
1
1
1

Negative changes/events

Loss of contact with family & friends
Study demands

Leisure time
Decreases in healthy diet and fitness
Financial problems
Failing a subject
Fatigue

Marital breakdown

12
9
3
3
2
1
2
1

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University Stressors

available sources of pleasure and enjoyment across all six areas measured by the
interview. There was also evidence of decreases in self-efficacy and self-belief, plus
decreases in capacity for effective decision-making and problem-solving. By far the
greatest outcomes of the increased demands and changes mentioned here were
upon participants’ relationships, from reductions in quality time spent with friends,
children and family members, sexual relations with partners, reduced feelings of
calm and support from partners and even marital/relationship breakdown in 5 out
of 32 participants. Financial problems due to reduced income meant that some par¬
ticipants needed to take out loans or borrow from their families. These financial
stringencies affected the everyday enjoyment levels experienced by participants by
reducing their ability to spend on luxury items, travel and recreational pursuits, as
well as being generally worried about making ends meet.
Most participants considered that study had significantly changed them. While
some of those changes were negative (such as decreased exercise and healthy eating,
fatigue, headaches, anxiety, stress and fear of the future, plus (in one case) ‘deterio¬
rating mental health’), there were also some very positive outcomes from university
study reported by this sample. For example, many participants reported finding a
new purpose in life, enjoying study and the demands of meeting deadlines, thinking
more effectively, meeting other people who also enjoyed these aspects of study,
increases in personal organisational ability and being more productive.
However, despite some of the changes reported by these students having been
perceived by them as ‘positive’ as well as some being ‘negative’, it is relevant to
ground all these changes in the wider literature regarding the effects of change
upon self-perceived stress levels. In that literature, stress is defined as ‘the nonspe¬
cific response of the body to any demand made upon it’ (Selye, 1974, p. 14). That
is, ‘stress’ is a physiological or psychological self-change outcome of the organism’s
need to respond to demands in its environment (Toates, 1995). The ability to meet
those demands by changing in appropriate ways is characterised in ‘homeostasis’,
and determines survival (Chrousos, 2009). Thus, many ‘stress’ responses (i.e., the
person’s self-change responses to new demands in their lives) may, in fact, cause
physiological and psychological damage themselves, some of which may take the
form of depression (Chrousos, 2009). This study has identified some of the major
demands that these students met and how they changed to adapt those demands.
That adaptation process may be termed as the stress response for these students,
and may be linked to the development of depression (Mirescu 8c Gould, 2006).
By comparison with previous scales developed in other cultures and nations, the
present data show marked differences in the kinds of demands and self-changes
reported in studies of other scales that were reviewed in the Introduction to this
paper, thus supporting the use of the individual interview methodology and the
hypothesis that items drawn from tests developed on USA students or other adults
may not be readily applicable to Australian university students. For example, none
of the students interviewed here reported being raped, being accused of rape,
finding out that they were HIV positive, experiencing the death of a close family
member or friend, contacting a sexually transmittable disease or being pregnant, as
reported by Renner and Mackin (1998) for their sample of students in the eastern
United States. Similarly, of the 11 subscales of the University Students Hassles Scale
(Pett & Johnson, 2005), seven were not found to be relevant within the Australian
Australian Journal of Giddance & CouiselMng

YoVre 20 Number 1 2010

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Vicki Bitsika, Christopher F. Sharpley and Vira Rubenstein

50

sample used here (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, traffic, safety, physical appearance,
parental expectation).
The identification (within an Australian sample) of previously available sources
of pleasure and enjoyment that were lost due to university study, plus those newly
acquired aversive events and changes, either of which may contribute to the devel¬
opment of depression, was the major focus of this study. By using an individual
interview methodology, participants’ experiences of these events were able to be
collected in their own words rather than distilled via a more distant item-develop¬
ment process. The findings reported in Table 1 show the major losses of positive
sources/events and the new aversive changes that students met, and thus constitute
the core of the measure of university study-based stressors that was developed from
these data. In addition, other less commonly reported sources of stress mentioned
by these students were also incorporated into the measure, and a 60-item Effects of
University Study on Lifestyle Questionnaire was derived. That self-report scale was
constructed so that respondents answer two questions about each of the 60 stressor
items: (a) whether they have experienced this particular stressor and (b) the effect
that this has had upon them, using a rating scale from -3 { Very negative), -2
( Moderately negative), -1 (A bit negative), 0 (No effect), 1 (A bit positive), 2
( Moderately positive) and 3 (Very positive). That questionnaire was evaluated with
a sample of 402 students from the same university (Bitsika, Sharpley 8c Hartley,
2010). Findings were used to further develop the 60-item scale into a 42-item selfreport scale of standardised format (Bitsika, Sharpley, 8c Holmes, 2010).
Although the hypothesised need for a locally relevant and individually based set
of stressor items has been supported by the data collected herein, there are some
limitations to this study. For example, although the sample was drawn from all
degree areas within the university studied, only a single Australian university was
sampled, and there may be differences across other university populations that
could affect the stressor list obtained from interviews. Similarly, the university
sampled was in a city, and there may be differences in the kinds of changes experi¬
enced by students at rural universities. Only about 20% of the students at the uni¬
versity sampled live in residential colleges, a proportion reflected in the living
conditions described by this sample of 32 students. While it was not possible to do
formal statistical data analysis on the possible effects of living situation on
responses within this small sample, that aspect of demographic data was not found
to be significantly associated with outcomes in the larger sample reported else¬
where (Bitsika, Sharpley 8c Hartley, 2010). Generalisability from the data collected
here within a relatively short period of time may be limited as students may list dif¬
ferent stressors at different times during their semesters (e.g., from early in the
semester to just before exams). Finally, although constrained by logistic and ethical
bases, the gathering of data from volunteers is always open to the potential con¬
found of the sample being either those participants who are least stressed (and who
therefore feel unthreatened to comment upon their lifestyles) or those who are
most stressed (and who seek to talk about their emotional state).
However, while all of these limitations are likely to be present in any interview
study and must be acknowledged as such, they are not avoidable and therefore the
data collected from such samples may be legitimately used in studies such as this
one where information is being gleaned from face-to-face individual interviews. In

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University Stressors

that may be more familiar, external validity is being traded off against inter¬
nal validity in this kind of research protocol, which is arguably necessary and justi¬
fiable at this stage of a research project such as this one. The report of the
psychometric status of the questionnaire that was drawn from the interview data
collected in this study (i.e., Bitsika, Sharpley & Hartley, 2010) adopted the reverse
methodology and focused upon external validity.
Although somewhat early in the development of this instrument, there are some
suggestions for university counsellors who may encounter students suffering from
depression that was initiated or exacerbated by the presence of some of these stres¬
sors. For example, counsellors might adopt a similar interview methodology to
ascertain the presence and effects of the major stressors found here. Similarly, being
aware of the general finding that students’ relationships appeared to be at the core
of their stressful experiences and also were significantly affected by the stressor
itself, might allow counsellors to focus upon how students’ relationships are affect¬
ing their ability to focus on study effectively. Finally, by making their student
clients aware that other students (such as those sampled in this study) also experi¬
ence these stressors, counsellors could alleviate some of the stress experienced by
those students who believe that they alone are feeling the effects of these events and
changes that accompany many students’ experiences of university study. By ‘nor¬
malising’ the depressive effects of losses of previously available sources of personal
enjoyment and support, or the encountering of new aversive demands and stressors
within their university lifestyles, counsellors might also assist their clients to accept
this (adaptive) process as non-clinical (in a mental ‘illness’ sense) and able to be
coped with via development of strategies designed to build alternative responses to
these stressors.
terms

i

Endnote
1

A copy of the interview protocol may be obtained from the first author on request.

51 *

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