A STUDY OF STUDENTS INVOLVEMENT IN NON ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES AND THE COPING TECHNIQUES AMONG UNDERGRADUATES A CASE STUDY OF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1. INTRODUCTION

People all over the world experience one form of stress or the other irrespective of their race, color and ethnicity, professional or academic background. Anspaugh, Hamrick, and Rosato (2003) shared the view that stress came in several forms and affected people of all ages and walks of life. This implies that stress is a part of life and has many causes to it and that the degree of stress in our lives is greatly dependent on factors, such as the physical health of the individual, the quality of our interpersonal relationships, the number of commitments and responsibilities we shoulder, the degree of others’ dependence on and expectations of us, the amount of support we receive from others and the number of changes of traumatic events we go through in our lives. This means that life itself is stress related depending on the individual’s lifestyle and the level of cultural development.

2.2. CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION CONCEPT OF STRESS

Researchers (Vermunt and Steensman, 2005; Topper, 2007; Ussery, 2007; Malach-Pines and Keinan, 2007) have defined stress as the perception of discrepancy between environmental demands (stressors) and individual capacities to fulfil these demands. While researcher (Campbell, 2006) defines stress as the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed on them. Stress occurs when an individual is confronted by a situation that they perceive as overwhelming and cannot cope up with. Academic stress among students have long been researched on, and researchers have identified stressors as too many assignments, competition with other students, failures, lack of pocket money (Fair brother and Warn, 2003), poor relationships with other students or lecturers, family or problems at home. Institutional (university) level stressors are overcrowded lecture halls, (Ongori, 2007; Awino and Agolla, 2008), semester system, and inadequate resources to perform academic work. Erkutlu and Chafra (2006) for instance opines that, when these events take place, an individual becomes disorganized, disoriented and therefore less able to cope up, thus resulting in stress related health problems. The pressure to perform well in the examination or test and time allocated makes academic environment very stressful (Erkutlu and Chafra, 2006; Polychronopoulou and Divaris, 2005; Misra and McKean, 2000).