P.rybological Reporis, 2002,91, 193-198. O Psychological Reports ZOO2

HOMEWORK, STRESS, AND MOOD DISTURBANCE IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ' NADYA M. KOUZMA AND GERARD A. KENNEDY Victoria Uttiuersily, flfutra/ia Sumtnarv.-This study aimed at invesugacing the relationship benveen hours of homework, stress, and mood disturbance in senior high school students, 141 boys and 228 girls, recruited from high schools across Victoria, Australia. Panicipants' ages ranged From 16 to 18 years (M= 16.6, SD= .6). A 1-wk. homework diary, a Self-reported Srress scale, and the Profile of Mood States were administered to students. Analysis showed that the number of hours spent completing homework ranged from 10 to 65 hours per week (M=37.0, SD=12.2). Tndependent samples [-test analyses showed significant sex differences, with female students scoring higher on hours of homework, stress, and mood disturbance compared to male students. Pearson product-moment correlations were significant and positive for hours of homework with stress and for hours of homework with mood disturbance.

In recent years, concern about the adverse effects of stress during adolescence has increased. It has been suggested that many of the problen~s associated with adolescence may be symptomatic of stress and indicative of increasing stress within this age group (Jones, 1993). Given that a considerable proportion of adolescents' time is spent in the school environment, a high percentage of stress experienced by adolescents is likely to originate from the school and related activities. In particular, the senior year of high school appears to be an emotionally taxing time and perhaps the most demanding year of schooling for students, given that decisions regarding educational and occupational aspirations are imposed at this time. Furthermore, the pressure to succeed academically is particularly evident during the senior year of high school, largely due to increased competition for university entrance. In general, school-related problems are known to be among the most commonly reported sources of stress for adolescents (e.g., McGuire & Mitic, 1987; Omizo, Omizo, & Suzuh, 1988). In a series of studies, Kouzma and Kennedy (2000) investigated academic scress in senior high school students in Victoria, Australia. Analysis showed that students reported high stress during three dilferent times across the final year of high school. The results also showed that "too much to do" was rated among one of the highest sources of stress for students (Kouzma 'This project was supported by a Victoria Universit , Faculty of Arts, Quantum Kese~rch Grant. The authors thank all students and teaching stalf €or their time and cooperation. Please address correspondence to Nadya M. Kouzma, Department of Psychology, Victoria University, St Albans Campus, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne City. MC VIC, Australia 8001.

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& Kennedy, 2001). But how much 'actual' time are students dedicating to

academic activities outside of school time, i.e., homework and study, and is this related to stress and mood disturbance? The following study was carried out to examine these questions.

METHOD The participants were 369 students (141 boys and 228 girls) recruited from seven large high schools from across suburban Victoria, Australia. Participan ts' ages ranged from 16 to 18 years ( M = 16.6, SD = 0.6). Homework was defined as completing school tasks, such as mathematics questions and reading, researching, and completing assignments and projects, and studying for tests or examinations, outside of usual school hours (8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.). Survey administrarion u7as used as a time-effective and cost-effective method of gathering information from a large number of students. The study was run for 1 wk,because it was envisaged that a longer testing period would be unmanageable and intrusive to students given their academic load and, therefore, would result in a poorer return of surveys. Students were asked ro complete a 1-wk. homework diary, which allowed them to mark the times of day that corresponded with when they were completing homework over the seven-day period. The diary method was likely to be more accurate ~ l ~ students to estimate the hours they had spent on homethan s i n ~ askmg work the week prior because they were recording behavior each day. Students were also asked to complete two other surveys: a Self-report Stress Scale, which consisted of a single item asking students to rate the stress they had experienced during the same 1-wk. period on a scale of 0: no stress to 4: extremely high stress in relation to their homework and the Profile of Mood States (McNair, Lorr, & Droppleman, 1981) which asked students to rate how much they had experienced each of 65 emotional or mood states during the same 1-wk. period on a scale with anchors of 0: not at all and 4: extremely. This questionnaire has six subscales given here, namely, Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, Confusion-Bewilderment, Anger-Hostility, and Vigor-Activity. The mean scores for each scale were summed and averaged to provide an overall Mood D~srurbancescore.

RESULTS Descriptive statistics for both boys and girls showed that the number of hours spent on homework ranged from LO to 65 hr. per week (M=37.0, SO= 12.2). Independent samples t-test analyses were conducted to analyze ddferences behveen boys and girls on the number of hours spent on homework, stress, Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, ConfusionBewilderment, Anger-Hosthty, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance. Pow-

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er analysis was conducted, using GPower (Franz & Erdfelder, 1992), to determine whether the sample size was adequate to detect medium-sized effects based on Cohen's conventions (1988) (d=.5). Power for the independent samples t tests involving sex differences was .99 based on an alpha level of .01. This indicates that if a true effect exists in the population from which the sample was drawn, then the statistical tests would yield significant results 99% of the t h e . As a precautionary measure, an experiment-wise error rate of . O l was used to examine sex differences, to reduce the chance of Type 1 error (meaning that a t value had to have a probabhty of . O l to be considered significant). The results are presented in Table 1. TABLE 1

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BOYS AND GIFU Measure Homework Hours Stress Depression-Dejection Tension-Anxiety Fatigue-Inertia Confusion-Bewilderment Anger-Hostili ty Vigor-Activity Mood Disturbance

Sex

M

SD

I

d

Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls

34.0 38.8 3.2 3.6 17.7 25.9 11.6 16.1 13.9 15.7 8.8 11.2 27.4 21.6 14.6 10.8 64.9 79.8

13.2 11.2 .8

-3.73 t

-39

.6

-6.16t

-.64

-5.57t

-.58

-5.421

-.57

-2.59t

-.27

-3.841

-.40

11.6 14.9 5.9 8.6 5.7 7.0 4.7 6.3 9.2 10.8 5.6 6.1 35.3 44.8

5.3lt

.55

.73t

.M

3.35t

-.35

t p < .001.

Table 1 shows that girls scored significantly higher than boys on the number of hours spent on homework, stress, Depress~on-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, Confusion-Bewilderment, and Mood Disturbance; and boys scored significantly higher than girls on Anger-Hostility and Vigor-Activity. Pearson product-moment correlations were calculated for the relationship between the number of hours spent on homework, stress, Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, Confusion-Bewilderment, Anger-Hosthty, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance. Separate correlations for boys and girls showed small sex differences for the relationship

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between variables. Therefore, data were collapsed across sex. The results are presented in Table 2. Table 2 shows that the number of hours spent on homework was positively related to scores for stress, Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Jnertia, Confusion-Bedderment , Anger-Hostility, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance. Also stress was positively correlated with rated Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Fatigue-Inertia, Confusion-Bewilderment, Anger-Hostility, Vigor-Activity, and Mood Disturbance. TABLE 2 CORREUTIONS AMONGVARIABLES

Measure

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1. Homework Hours 2. Stress 3. Depression-Dejection 4 . Tension-Anxiety 5 . Fatigue-Inertia 6. Confusion-Bewilderment 7. Anger-Hostility 8. Vigor-Activity 9. Mood Disturbance

Drscussro~ The present study represents a prehinary investigation into homework, stress, and mood disturbance. The results shed some light on the number of hours that senior high school students report dedicating to homework every week outside of the usual school times, with girls reporting an average of 39 hours and boys an average of 34 hours. At face value, these hours may appear to be excessive. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is not uncommon for many senior high school students to dehcate a high number of hours to completing homework, with reports of students 'staying up all night' studying. It is unclear from this study whether this is a tirne-management issue, a lack of understanding of the homework task, or a fact of senior high schooling where students are expected to cope with large amounts of homework. There is the possibility that these students were mixing their homework time with social activities, such as watching television or speakmg to friends but counted this as homework or study time. To ascertain the validity of the hours reported by students, teachers from each of the schools were asked how much time students should be spending on homework for a typical array of classes. Responses ranged from recommendations of at least 3 hours per night, i.e., 21 hours per week, to at least 4 hours per weeknight and 6 hours per weekend, i.e., 32 hours per

HOMEWORK, STRESS, MOOD

197

week. This indicates that the results of the present study may be h i r e d by the school setting from which the students were selected. While the teachers' recommendations are comparable with students' reports, there is still the possibility that students overrated the number of hours they had spent on homework, possibly due to procrastination during the I-wk, testing period or dramatization. Analysis yielded significant positive relationships between the number of hours spent on homework, self-reported stress, and Mood Disturbance in senior high school students. Although this f i d u ~ gis not surprising, researchers should check whether the results are robust. Whilst cause and effect relationships cannot be inferred from the presenr study, the results suggest that the way students perform or perceive homework is negatively associated with their psychological well-being. Kouzma and Kennedy (2001) found that the following were major sources of stress for senior high school students: essays and projects, timing and spacing of assignments, lack of time for study, amount to learn, and knowing what is important to study. E q u d y as important, and consistent with the previous stressors, students reported lack of time for family and friends and lack of time for own interests as major sources of stress. Together, these resulcs indicate thac homework may have a direct or a n indirect influence on students' psychological well-being. It is pertinent to acknowledge that self-reports of internal states, such as stress and moods, are based on perceptual processes and are, therefore, subject to biases. The effects of environmental factors, beliefs and individual differences on the perceptual and reporting process are well known (Pennebaker & Watson, 1988). However, self-reports represent an important source of information. For example, if students report that they feel stress, then it is likely that there wdl be some behavioral implications. The results suggest that stress may manifest in different forms in boys and girls since boys scored significantly higher than girls on Anger-Hostility and Vigor-Activity, and girls scored significantly higher than boys on Depression-Dejection, Tension-Anxiety, Far~gi~e-Inertia, and Confusion-Bewilderment. However, these differences and the other sex differences found may reflect response bias in students' self-reporting. That is, girls may be more inclined to report stress and mood dsturbances than boys, possibly related to sex-role identity or family sociahzation practices. O n the other hand, it is possible that there is more pressure placed on girls than boys to do well at school, or perhaps girls are more motivated to achieve. Given the developmental level of the research sample, 16- to 18-yr.-old adolescents, it is Likely that 'natural' stress or mood disturbances which are not school-related but h k e d to the second decade of life (Erkson, 1950) may have influenced the results. Although it remains unresolved whether ad-

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olescence is an inherently stressful life-stage (Kendall & Williams, 1986), it is abundantly clear that stress during adolescence is of great importance ( W d iams & Uchiyama, 1989) and that ic is virtually impossible to account for all the factors that contribute to stress in such research. In the present study, it is difficult to distinguish benveen students' mood disturbances, for instance, dependent on social difficulties, as opposed to feeling overwhelmed by the amount of homework given at school. It is important to be able to make comparisons between students who are seniors and those who are freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. Researchers should examine how the senior year differs from the other years, particularly in relation to students' stress and mood dsturbances among the different school years. It may also be important to examine additional sources of stress or mood disturbances in students' psychosocial environment that are not associated with school challenges. The present results indicate that research should focus on senior high school students and how they handle pressure placed on them academically. REFERENCES COHEN.J. (1988) Sto~isticolpower analysrs for the behouiorol sciences. (2nd ed.) Hilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. ERIKSON, E. H. (1950) Childhood otrd society. New York: Norton. FRANZ,F., & ERDFELDER, E. (1992) GPower: a priori, post-hoc, and compromise power analysrs for IMS-DOS. [Computer pro21. ~ mBonn, ] FRG: Bonn Univer., Department of Psychology. JONES.W. R. (1993) Gender.spcc~hcddferences in the perceived antecedents of academic srress. Psychological Reports, 72, 739-743. KENDALL. P C., & WILLVIMS, C. L. (1986) Therapy with adolescents: creating rhe 'marginal man'. Behavior Therapy, 17, 522-537. KOUZMA, N. M., & KENNEDY. G . A. (2000) Academic stress, self-efficacy, social support, and health behaviours in Female Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) students. The Australian Edircatrottal arid Developwetttal Psychologisl, 17(2), 24-43. KOUZMA, N. M., &KENNEDY. G. A. (2001) Self-reported sources of srress in senior high school students. Paper resented at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Conference, ~ n f e r s t a n d i n gYouth Pathways: What does the Research Tell Us? Melbourne, Australia. normal teenagers MCGUIRE.D. P., & MITIC.W. (1987) Perceived stress in adolescents-what worry a bout. Catzada's Mental Health, 35, 2-5 MCNAIR,D. M., LORR,M., & DROPPLEMAN, L. F, (1981) Profile of Mood States mattrial. San Diego, CA: Educational and Industrial Testing Scr\ Ice. L. A. (1988) Children and stress: an exploratory study OMIZO,M . M., OMIZO,S. A.. &SUZUKI, of stressors and symptoms. The School Counselor, 35, 267-274. PENNEBAKER, J. W., &WATSON,D. (1988) Self-reports and physiolo ical measures in the lvorkplace. In J. J. Hurrell, L. R. Murphy, S. L. Saurer, & C. L. t o o p e r (Eds.), Occiipotional stress: issires arid developtnents it2 research. London: Taylor & Francis. Pp. 183-199. WILLIAMS, C. L., & UCHIYAMA, C. (1989) Assessment of Me events during adolescence: the use of self-report inventories. Adolescetice, 24, 97-117.

Accepted Jittze 24, 2002.