How Stress Affects Academic Performance

By: Madeline Ellis Published: Wednesday, 22 October 2008

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In the hustle and bustle of the modern world, stress is unavoidable. Everyone—adults, teens and even kids—experience it at times and in different ways. Just enough stress can keep you on your toes, ready to rise to a challenge. But too much stress can have debilitating effects on our health, contributing to and agitating many problems including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, depression and sleep disorders. Now researchers have found a clear connection between student stress and academic success. In the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Boynton Health Service surveyed 9,931 students at 14 different two- and four-year schools. Then they matched grade point averages with health problems such as stress, smoking and drinking as well as typical lifestyle choices such as gambling and excessive screen time. They found that students with unhealthy behaviors had significantly lower GPAs. Stress was one of the biggest factors. Of the 69.9 percent of students who reported they were stressed, 32.9 percent said that stress was hurting their academic performance. In fact, those who reported eight or more emotional stresses—ranging from credit card debt to failing a class or conflicts with parents—had an average GPA of 2.72 while those who reported no significant stress had an average GPA of 3.3. “While this may seem like a small difference in GPA, when you are looking at over 9,000 students the impact of this difference is huge,” said Dr. Ed Ehlinger, director of Boynton Health Services and a lead author of the study.However, the study found that the ability to manage stress was equally important. Students who said they were able to handle their stress effectively performed much better than those who said they couldn’t. This is an important finding, because it can persuade colleges to provide students with the resources they need to learn how to manage stress, Dr. Ehlinger said. “If students can manage their stress, then their stress level will not matter.” Twenty percent of the students reported having sleep difficulties that impacted their academics. Students reporting sleep deficiencies had an average GPA of 3.08 compared with 3.27 for those who got enough sleep. “The more days a student gets adequate sleep, the better GPA’s they attain,” Dr. Ehlinger said. “There is a direct link between the two.”
The study showed that excessive television and computer use (not including academic use) also cut significantly into grades. Students who didn’t watch any television during the day had an average GPA of 3.37, while the GPA of those with two hours of TV per day dropped to 3.21. And students with four or more hours of screen time per day had an average GPA of 3.04 or less. Students who played less than one hour of computer or video games per day had a GPA of 3.31, while those who played games for more than five hours had a GPA of 2.98. Dr. Ehlinger pointed out that previous studies showed that students who spend excessive time on the computer, watching television or playing video games were more likely to engage in other unhealthful habits such as eating fast food. “Screen time had a huge impact on grade-point average,” he said. “We knew it had an impact, but not that big.”The same pattern was seen with binge drinking, drugs and smoking. Students who reported issues with alcohol had an average GPA of 2.92, compared with 3.28 for students who did not. The drug use gap was 2.94 versus 3.25. And students who reported smoking within the past 30 days had an average GPA of 3.12 compared with 3.28 for those who reported not smoking. “Even students who smoked once or twice in a month had lower GPA’s than those who didn’t smoke,” said Dr. Ehlinger. “Using tobacco to calm down or ‘to be social’ is lowing students’ grades.” Dr. Ehlinger said that while most of the results were expected, there were some surprises, especially how resilient young adults can be. Students who reported having been sexually or physically abused at some point in their lives had no significant differences in their GPA compared with other students. However, those who reported being sexually assaulted or abused within the previous 12 months did report lower grades. This shows that with time, young adults can overcome such trauma, at least as far as their grades are concerned, he said. Another surprise was that working to earn money had no effect on grades. That was true regardless of whether students spent one or 40 hours a week at work. “The conventional wisdom is that the more you worked, the more stress is placed on your academics,” Dr. Ehlinger said. “There must be something else going on that is protective of folks that are working. It might be a matter of time management.”Dr. Ehlinger said he hopes this survey will encourage college students to change behavior and for colleges to pay more attention to the health of their students. “We hope this information helps students make wise decisions,” he said. “If you’re investing a lot of time and money in your education, do you really want to waste your investment on behaviors that interfere with your academic success?” He is also hopeful it will help convince the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system to require students to have health insurance. The University of Minnesota already requires insurance. “If we can get students insured that might help them do better in school,” Dr. Ehlinger said. “(Having) no insurance will stop you from getting preventative treatment and using health services. All of those things lead you to not deal with the issues that could affect your academic career.”“College students are so important for our economic development—the development of our society,” Dr. Ehlinger said. “One way to protect that investment in our future is to help them stay healthy.”