The impact of parent pressure and peer-related factors on academic performance of undergraduate nursing students

Nursing students experience greater pressure from various sources of academic life, which ultimately creates stress among them. This study aimed to assess the impact of parental pressure and peer-related factors on academic performance of undergraduate nursing students, and to explore its relationship with their academic performance, and to determine the association of sociodemographic variables on parental pressure and peer-related factors. A descriptive, cross-sectional survey design, with a convenience sampling was adopted in this study. Participants were 408 undergraduate nursing students belonging to first, second, third or fourth year, and studying in various nursing colleges at Ernakulam district, Kerala, India. The data were collected using a socio-demographic questionnaire, parent pressure rating scale, peer- influence rating scale and an academic performance assessment rating scale. About 79.41 percent and 66.91 percent of the participants reported to have low parental pressure and peer influence on their academic performance respectively, and 20.5 percent and 32.59 percent of the participants reported moderate parent pressure and peer-influence on their academic performance respectively. A highly significant weak negative correlation was found between parental pressure and academic performance and between peer-related factors and academic performance. Parental pressure was significantly associated with birth order of the participants, father’s occupation and the study type of the participants. The study results suggest that there is a significant negative influence of both parental and peer-related factors on academic performance of adolescents. Future studies can explore in detail the factors which could positively and negatively influence the nursing students’ academic performance.