EXPLORING THE DIFFERENCE AMONG THE STRESS LEVELS OF STUDENTS WITH DIFFERENT STREAMS

Stress is an all-pervading phenomenon in life. An optimum level of stress is necessary and useful for personality growth, but extremities cause’s troubles. Stress has been defined as the pressure felt by college students to meet the personal & emotional, academic and social challenges of day-to-day life which hampers their wellbeing. Stress, now has become a part and parcel of our lives. It affects all the age groups, but its more crucial to the students ranging from 18 to 25 years of age as they experience a great number of changes in their lives as they enter into adulthood, they face transitions which are stressful enough to shake them, they face issues like financial issues, personal and emotional issues and social issues, wellbeing related issues. The objective of the study was to explore the significant difference of stress levels among students of different streams. A self-developed and validated Stress Inventory for College students was used for the purpose of the study. The Stress inventory was consisting of 58 items which fall under four dimensions: personal and emotional, academic pressure, social pressure and wellbeing. The data was collected on a total of 970 college students from SHUATS and Allahabad University. The findings of the present study suggest that science students scored high on the wellbeing related stress whereas humanities students scored medium and commerce students scored low on the wellbeing related stress, it was also found that science students scored high on the academic pressure related stress whereas humanities students scored medium and commerce students scored low on the academic pressure stress, also science students scored high on the Personal and Emotional stress whereas humanities students scored medium and commerce students scored low on the Personal and Emotional stress, it was also found that the science students scored high on the social pressure related stress whereas humanities and commerce students scored low on the social pressure. Similarly, the overall stress level of science students was higher than humanities and commerce students.