Effect of stress among Makerere University students

Abstract

Stress among students of Makerere University are as high as 57.4%. However, the effects of stress and the copying strategies among Makerere students remains unclear hence this study aimed to fill this research gap. This was a descriptive cross sectional study among undergraduate students at Makerere University. Random sampling was used to select study participants and self-answering of the questionnaire was done. This study interviewed a total of 132 final year students pursuing BIOP at Makerere university. Collected data was entered and cleaned in Microsoft excel 2016 and exported to SPSS (Version 21) for further analyses. Descriptive analysis was done. I found that 53.79% of the participants were females and 84.09% of the participants belonged to the age group 21-25 years. I found that dealing with university work and deadlines contributed to stress in 92.42% of the participants. The highest effect of stress reported by the participants was lack of enough sleep (59.85%). It was also found that 64.39% of the respondents coped up through stress by listening to music. I found that the major causes of stress among students of BIOP of Makerere were University work and deadlines and financial issues. The main effect of stress among the students was lack of sleep. I also found that the main coping strategy for the students was listening to music. Key words: Stress, Students. Makerere university