Academic Stress Levels in Annual & Semester System: A Cross-Sectional Comparative Study on Students of Physiotherapy in Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

Physical Therapy in Pakistan has not yet been considered amongst the reputed professions due to the lack of awareness among the public. This being the very reason of the higher stress among the students studying physiotherapy is kept under consideration in this study. The main purpose of this study was to determine if the students of Annual system endure stress levels higher than those of Semester system. Also the aim was to determine which assessment system was more conducive for an effective learning & to acknowledge the major stressors among the DPT students along with their coping strategies. This study was a Comparative Cross-Sectional Study conducted in duration of 8 months. Data was collected from both male and female students of DPT who had completed 50% of their credit hours of the curriculum. The sample size calculated was found to be 343 (n=343). Exposure assessment included the International Stress Questionnaire which is most commonly used instrument for the evaluation of stress levels among students. The International Stress Questionnaire was administered into a group of 70 students from Public and Private Institutes for validation purpose. Thus 560 questionnaires were distributed among students amongst which only 384 were fully completed and thus included for the statistical analysis. Mean age of the students was found to be 21±1.34 years. Amongst 384 students, 292 were females and 92 were males.190 students were from Annual system i.e. Pass/Fail system and 194 had GPA system as their assessment system. Interpretations were done according to the standard way i.e. a score of 4 or less was supposed to be mild, 5-13 was moderate and 14 or more was severe. Amongst those from Annual system, 17 had mild, 139 had moderate and 34 had severe stress. Amongst 194 students from GPA system, 122 had mild and 72 had moderate stress whereas none of those reported to fall in the category of severe stress. Independent t test was applied to identify if there were significant differences between the two groups and the p value was found to be 0.00 i.e. highly significant. A forum should be developed to register all the students enrolled in Doctor of Physiotherapy every year encompassing all Institutes to prevent the biasness due to non-probability sampling method used to recruit sample.