Stress, substance use and academic performance among university students

Abstract

This report presents a full account of the study carried out on stress, substance use and academic performance among university students in Makerere University. The report comprises of five chapters, namely; introduction, literature review, methodology, results and finally discussions, conclusion and recommendations. The main objectives of this study were; to examine the relationship between stress and academic performance among the students, to examine the relationship between stress and substance use among university students and to examine the relationship between substance use and academic performance among university students. In order to achieve the above objectives a well-structured questionnaire was administered to the population of interest and the data obtained was analyzed using Ms-excel and SPSS using univariate and bivariate data analysis tools of frequency tables and Pearson correlation. In all cases, it has been revealed that substance use is more prevalent among the males as compared to the females in the study area. Age, religion and year of study showed no significant relationship with regards to stress, substance use and academic performance. The results of this study were a bit worrisome as it was revealed that majority of the university students do experience stress and unfortunately choose to cope by using substances which only creates a temporary situation. Academic performance on the other hand improves with use of substances as of this study therefore there is need to do more research and data analysis to discover how.