School stress in India: Effects on time and daily emotions

Abstract

Like adolescents in East Asia, Indian middle-class adolescents face a highly competitive examination system. This study examines the in uence of school demands on the daily time use and subjective states of Indian young people. One hundred urban, middle-class, 8th-grade students carried alarm watches for 1 week and provided 476 4 reports on their activities and subjective states at random times, following the procedures of the Experience Sampling Method. These adolescents were found to spend one third of their waking time in school-related activities, with girls spending more time than boys. Schoolwork generated negative subjective states as re ected in low affect state, below-average activation levels, lower feeling of choice, and higher social anxiety. T hese negative states were most frequent during homework. The trade-off faced by Indian adolescents were evident in the ndings that those who spent more time doing homework experienced lower average emotional states and more internalising problems, while those who spent more time in leisure experienced more favourable states but also reported higher academic anxiety and lower scholastic achievement.

Adolescent depressive symptoms in India, Australia and USA: Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling of cross-national invariance and predictions by gender and age

“…The higher levels of depressive symptomology observed in male adolescents in all three city cohorts may reflect the difficulties and additional stressors involved in the transition from primary schooling to high school, combined with the onset of puberty. The findings accord with previous reports of correlations between negative subjective states potentially symptomatic of depression, such as below average activation levels and low affect, and school-based stressors in Indian students in Grade 8 (40). Both stress at school and family as well as family history of mental illness have previously been identified as risk factors for depression in Indian populations (46).…”

“…In other words, the higher levels of general stressors associated with everyday life in developing nations, compared to developed nations may contribute significantly to vulnerability to depression (39) as adolescents experience strong pressure in a competitive educational system. Previous studies have noted that students in the Indian education system faced an increased level of academic pressure from the age of thirteen due to the commencement of annual exams (40). Stressful events are known to impact differently on each gender in terms of their vulnerability to depression (5).…”

Relations Among Personal Agency, Motivation, and School Adjustment in Early Adolescence.

“…However, we believe that any ordering will be circumspect until our research designs and analyses can establish reciprocal causation over time. Specifically, intensive longitudinal studies (e.g., weekly or daily assessments over a semester or year) designed specifically to tap into the dynamic interplay among the motive-belief system and school outcomes are needed (Stone & Shiffman, 1994;Verma, Sharma, & Larson, 2002;Walls & Schafer, in press). Related dynamical analyses may provide a useful framework for exploring these relations.…”

Feelings and performance in the first year at university: Learning-related emotions as predictors of achievement outcomes in mathematics and statistics

“…In addition, learning in this setting (e.g. while preparing homework) evokes stronger negative emotions when compared, for example, with the emotional experience of learning in the classroom (Verma et al, 2002). To capture more of the students' emotional experiences within the different learning settings encountered in a course, our study links learning-related emotions and achievement outcomes at the course level.…”