The aim of the present experiment was to investigate the effect of exam stress on students and how they cope with it. Exam stress results in various influences on student’s routine lifestyle and emotional state. The current experiment directs the techniques that students use to manage experienced exam stress.
Four second-year psychology students have been interviewed about exam stress experiences and coping strategies using a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was used to analyse obtained data.
The analysis generated two master themes: (1) negative experiences of exams, (2) stress management.
It has been concluded that mental health and communication with friends and parents tend to decline during the exam time. Students become anxious and depressed. However, it has been found that students tend to use different coping strategies to reduce stress caused by exams. These findings were consistent with a theoretical framework and previous findings.
Introduction
Stress is an evolutionary body response that humans have to protect themselves in time of danger. When human is faced with stress stimuli a hormone release happens within the body and this causes severe physiological changes, such as an increase in heart or metabolic rates. This is known as “fight-or-flight” response. Variety of university aspects may activate this body response within students, including preparing for the exam and sitting the exams.
Exams are an important part of the modern society that issued to measure and determine students education, career placement and future prospects. All students try to perform well to achieve family pride, respect and career. However, as a consequence of this pressure, students not able to enjoy university life and moreover produce a negative impact on their academic performance, physical and mental health. Dayalan, Subramanian and Elango (2010) have found that medical students experienced a high level of anxiety and depression score, and also worsen mental health and self-esteem during examination time. Furthermore, it was found that every year about 25.000 students in the age group of 18 to 20 years commit suicide during the exam time (Banerjee, 2001). Students also tend to spend less time socialising and active leisure as a result of time pressures during the exam time. Lee and Larson (2000) found that Korean and American adolescents spent less time in leisure activities and socialising and this results in higher depression rates that may further magnify the effect of the examination stress.
Nevertheless, exam stress can be managed like another stress caused by a variety of factors. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) suggested that there are two main ways of coping with stress: emotion-focused and problem-focused. The emotion-focused method involves activities that make you relaxed and help you not think about the problem, for example, hobbies. Whereas, problem-focused strategies aim to reduce the source of stress. This theory was examined by Lazarus and Folkman (1985), it has been found that students tend to use a mix of both ways of coping to reduce exam stress.
The present experiment investigated student experiences of exam stress and the strategies students use to reduce exam stress. How student affected by the exam period and stress that they experienced during this period of the year, and moreover how students manage their stress, which strategies do they use. Whether students use a mixture of different strategies (both emotional-focused and problem-focused) or one way of coping is more dominant than another.
Method
Participants
Four participants took part in the experiment. There were three females and one male with age range 20-22. All participants were second-year BSc Psychology students at City, University of London. An opportunity sample technique was adopted in this study to ensure that all participants are full-time students and they had experienced exam stress in their lives, thus, research topic was applicable for all participants.
Procedure
Data was collected using a semi-structured interview with open-responses. The semi-structured interview allows the researcher to ask interviewee more if interesting topics have been mentioned, resulting in wider coverage of the topic and richer data. Each participant has been interviewed individually in the separate room. All interviews were recorded using an iPhone and last approximately 8-15 minutes each. In the beginning of the experiment, all participants were introduced to the research aim and asked whether they still want to take part in the research. Participants were also given an opportunity to ask any questions prior and after the interview.
All recordings were downloaded to the laptop and removed from the researcher’s phone. The data was labelled without participant names and any identification marks to ensure confidentiality.
Analysis
The data analysis of the transcribed interviews was conducted using a thematic analysis. All four interviews have been analyased. Each transcript has been read several times by the researcher to familiarise with the data and all details. After researcher made a list of ideas and concepts that were mentioned in the responses – codes. When all codes are identified, researcher sort common codes from all interviews by themes. A theme is a particular common pattern that was found in all interviews and represents significant ideas relevant to the experiment topic. There were two master themes, which divided into four subthemes. All themes were data-driven, as the inductive analysis was used in the experiment.
Reflexivity
I have a particular interest in this research question, as I experienced exam stress personally during studying. Moreover, the problem of exam stress consequences become more disturbing recently. Regarding my research, I have found just a few experiments that were talking about strategies to reduce exam stress to help students cope with it, as the majority of experiments were linked to the negative aspects of the stress and its influences on lifestyle. Thus, I conscious come up with a research topic that is relevant to my life same as to the participant’s life, to bring a possible useful implication for students about the stress managing techniques. However, I was aware of the bias and that my opinion may influence the results of the experiment, or I can interpret participant’s answers incorrectly. Therefore, I was analysing data heedfully and tried to isolate my personal opinion and thoughts.
Results
The aim of the research was to investigate student experiences of exam stress and strategies students do to reduce stress level. The application of thematic analysis leads to a generalisation of two master themes and four interrelated subthemes (see Table 1). Master themes and subthemes attribute to understanding exam stress experiences and allow compare strategies that students use to manage stress.
Table 1. Master and Interrelated Subthemes from Interview Data
Master theme Interrelated sub themes
1) Negative experiences of exam stress a) Mental health changes
b) Social pattern changes
2) Stress management a) Problem-focused strategies
b) Emotion-focused strategies
1) Negative experiences of the exam period
The negative experiences of the exams have been mentioned in all four interviews. Exam period influence lifestyle of students and changes their chronic routine. Two main changes have been noticed in the interviews, thus current master theme results in additional two interrelated subthemes: a) Mental health changes; b) Social pattern changes.
a) Mental health changes
Mental health is a condition that includes the sociological, emotional and psychological well-being of the person. If people worried about something their mental state tends to get worse. During the interview, all students complained about very nervous and depressed state during exams or even before. Participants describe themselves and their emotional state using words such as “worried”, “hopeless”, “panic” and even “anxious”. Therefore, exam period has a negative impact on student’s mental health.
“… I’m always sad [deep] and depressed to be fair. It’s quite unusual for me to be happy when exams are …” (Participant 1)
b) Change in social pattern
Change in regular social patterns is another aspect of student’s routine that was influenced by exams. In the interviews, participants describe in great details how exam time alter their social connections. All participants said that their social communications become worse because of exams, they explained this in terms of time pressures. All students spend almost all their free time studying and revising at this time if the year (April-June). Considering the amount of the workload, undergraduates have not enough time for communication with friends or even parents.
Nevertheless, students noticed that communication with university friends tends to improve at this point. Participants mentioned that they socialise with classmates much often than usually. Level of understanding among college friends improves due to a common problem and they tend to support each other.
“ .. our relationship strengthen because we are in the same boat and we are studying for the same exams and we, we all understand the pressures…” (Participant 2)
2) Stress management
Exam stress can be managed same as another stress caused by different sources. In the conducted interview, all participants mentioned that they use a variety of strategies to relax during the exam period. However, students tend to use different techniques that aimed different targets. According to the Lazarus and Folkman (1984) stress management theory, there are two main ways of stress management. Thus, two subthemes developed: a) Problem-focused strategies; b) Emotion-focused strategies.
a) Problem-focused strategies
Problem-focused strategies aim to deal with a source of stress to reduce tension. All participants have mentioned that they use revision as a coping mechanism to improve emotional state during the exam period. Participants discussed different revision strategies that they use, such as flashcards, YouTube videos and online quizzes. All four participants mentioned study orientated techniques for stress management in their responses. Participants suggested that more time revising make them feel relaxed. Half of the participants discussed only problem-focused strategies in their answers. One participant mentioned that there are no stress reduction techniques for him, but only revision.
b) Emotion-focused strategies
Emotion-focused strategies helps you not to think about the problem and this results in the reduction in stress level. These strategies may include any activities or hobbies that will replace thoughts about stress to more pleasurable thoughts and emotions while doing things that you like. Only two participants mentioned that they like doing activities to “mind off” and become more concentrated when coming back to studying.
“… one of my hobbies is just to go outside and go for a really long walks through the city… it clears my head and I feel like I can concentrate after even more…” (Participant 3)
However, participants mentioned that time spent on leisure activities decreased due to the large workload at this time of the year.
Discussion
The current experiment aimed to investigate student experiences of exam stress and strategies to reduce it. It has been found that student’s mental health tends to worsen during the exam period. Students become nervous, anxious and depressed. These findings are consistent with a previous research in this field (Dayalan, Subramanian and Elango, 2010).
Students also experienced a decline in social communication with parents and family, as it was found before (Lee and Larson, 2000). However, it was found that despite communications with parents and friends become worse, there is an improvement in communication among fellow students. Thus, we cannot conclude that exams have a negative effect on the social connections, as it influences interpersonal pattern in both ways.
Moreover, results showed that students tend to use different strategies to reduce exam stress. They use both emotion-focused and problem-focused techniques for stress management as it was found before (Lazarus and Folkman, 1985). However, there was a straightforward dominant tendency to use problem-focused techniques among participants. This means that students are more likely to revise more, using different revision techniques, to manage exam stress. This lead to the conclusion that problem-focused techniques are more appropriate than emotional-focused in situations such as examination.
However, it may be argued that results cannot be generalised due to individual differences. Spileberger and Vagg (1995) assumed that test anxiety construct is a situation-specific trait according to individual differences in the extent how person threat about the exam and other social factors, such as parents pressure and social judgement. Thus, each student perceives exam stress differently according to their own beliefs and personality and therefore we cannot generalise student experiences of exam stress to all students. This limitation also relates to findings related to strategies, as the level of stress student experience directly relates to the way student will cope with it.
Furthermore, important methodological limitations can be noticed in the experiment. Obtained data was analysed using thematic analysis. However, a thematic analysis is highly subjective in its nature, as themes and codes are detected by the experimenter based on his interpretation of the participant's answers. A researcher may interpret data incorrectly or data may be affected by researcher’s personal opinion. Therefore, analysing data using thematic analysis may result in biased findings. Thus, further studies should use a peer review, while selecting themes, to improve the reliability of the data.
The implications of the experiment for educational context are clear. The research demonstrated ways of coping with exam stress among students. However, further studies should investigate the usefulness of different stress coping techniques using a reliable measurement, for example, blood samples to estimate stress.
In summary, current study results in better understanding of student experiences and their mental state during the examination. It showed how exam alters day-to-day student’s routine life, such as social communications, and also demonstrated preferable techniques for stress management among students.