Journal of Applied Medical Sciences

Perceived Academic Stress and Its Association with Student Characteristics

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• Abstract
  

  The first aim of the study was to identify academic stress in the different categories of the students such as demographic, education, health behavior and health status categories. A secondary aim was to examine the relation between the students’ characteristics and their perceived stress. The sample of the analysis included 187 students, of which 70% were females. The participants answered a questionnaire. The results showed that the respondents, on the average, had moderate levels of stress; only 12% of the sample reported a high level of stress. The most common physical symptom of academic stress was headache; depression and anxiety were the most frequent psychological symptoms of the stress. High academic stress was more prevalent among the women, student with overweight or obesity, nursing students, and students with low physical activity and poor health status. There were associations between students’ perceived stress and gender, physical activity and subjective health status. It seems that female students with subjective poor health status and low physical activity tend to experience the highest stress.