IZVORI STRESA STUDENATA U AKADEMSKOM KONTEKSTU / SOURCES OF STUDENT STRESS WITHIN ACADEMIC CONTEXT

Abstract

Adaptation of students in the academic context implies successfully meeting the demands of student life that are placed before them. Many students may have difficulty making academic as well as emotional and social adjustments to their studies. In order to improve the quality of student adjustment in higher education institutions, it is important to identify the factors that make it difficult. With insight into the literature of this area, it is possible to state that numerous sources of stress can contribute to difficulties in adaptation and daily functioning of students. The aim of this paper is to identify the most common sources of stress in the academic context from the perspective of students. The I and II cycle students of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo (N = 46) have participated in this research. The research was conducted using an online questionnaire containing ten questions, which relate to various aspects of functioning of students in the higher education context. The questionnaire was constructed for the purposes of this research, and the task of the participants was to indicate which sources of stress they perceive when it comes to, for example, organization of work and time, implementation of administrative and other technical tasks, cooperation and communication with professors, teaching contents and assignments, teaching methods and forms, evaluation and monitoring of the student work, etc. A qualitative analysis of the participants' responses was done. The obtained results indicate that the biggest source of stress is time pressure, which refers to short deadlines for the realization of assignments and the inability to adequately distribute activities in a certain period. Also, most students perceive stressful the difficulties they encounter when it comes to administrative procedures at the Faculty (cooperation with services and the functioning of the information system). In addition to the above stated sources of stress, a number of students also report difficulties that occur in communication and cooperation with some professors and point out to an overload of teaching assignments (seminar papers, reports and essays).