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IMPACTS OF STRESS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF GRADE 12

ABM STUDENTS

A Research Proposal
Presented to the
Faculty of STNHS-SHS
Santo Tomas, Isabela

_______________

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements in the subject
Inquiries, Investigation and Immersion

_______________

by
Bagunu, Ranier D.
Damagan, Frans Vincent G.
Datul, Rito B.
Angolluan, Jesabel G.
Buraga, Anicia G.
Cardenas, Angelika T.
Carniyan, Arlene B.
Cataggatan, Camille V.
Malsi, Rona Q.

October 2018
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Chapter I

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Stress can have both positive and negative consequences on the individual. Having

optimum stress can lead to peak efficiency, create satisfaction a sense of well-being and

accomplishment and other reward for success. On the other hand, excessive stress in school

can result to loss of appetitive for reading, to perform well and declining mental and

physical health. Stress is caused by some factors (stressors) which exist both within and

without the school environment. It also generated a great deal of interest in recent years

and has been of great concern to members of the academic and other researchers.

Stress is a main source of problems being faced by the students during their

academic carrier when they are struggling to get the academic achievements for their future

life. Academic pressure is one of the factors that cause failure among the students. Stress

is the response of mental and action through hormonal signalling, the perception of danger

sets off an automatic response system, known as the fight or flight response. Commonly

stress refers to two things, the psychological perception of pressure and the body's response

to it, on the other, which involves multiple systems, from breakdown to muscles to
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memory. Stress is a lot of expectation from self. It is the feeling of strain and pressure. It

is also a threating feeling (Cohen et al., 2000).

Psychological stress occurs when an individual perceives that environmental

demands duty or exceed his or her adaptive capacity. Stress generate psychological

disorders that may arise as downstream (Jex, 2001). Many different things can cause

physical stress, such as fear of something dangerous or emotional, such as concern about

your family or work and a poor outcome in the study. This is a reaction to things around

you that cause stress (Manuel et al., 2003). It is important to note that stress can have both

negative and positive impact on students. Most psychologists assert that moderate stress

motives individuals to achieve and fuels creativity, although stress may hinder individuals

from performance on the difficult task (Nelson & Simmons, 2003). Stress impact on the

emotional and physical behavior of persons. It is perceived as events or situations that

reason individuals to feel tension, pressure, or negative emotions (Bernstein et al., 2008).

Stress can affect our emotional intelligence too. It affects our own feelings, the

ability to understand our own feelings and communication. It can prevent us from

controlling our emotions, associating with others, changing adaptation and maintaining

positive mode. Stress from a diversity of sources, such as confusion and poor classrooms,

or problems with family or fellows. Stress means that the methods of fighting it will help

to promote the student's ability to learn. It is likely that changes notified in home and
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learning environment can increase the control and educational capacity of the students.

Students can effectively improve minimum pressure and improve serious performance

(Suldo et al., 2009).

Stress among students is multifactorial, arising from both academic and non-

academic factors, including socio-cultural, conservational, and psychological qualities.

Stress levels may intensify to important scopes in some students, to present with indications

of nervousness particularly during tests and examination periods. Academic factors were

the major cause of stress in most students, followed by physical, social, and emotional.

Commonly of students with stress reported high scores of poor self-esteem, and about half

scored high on depression scales. Stress to be related with poor academic performance

(Barnes et al., 2010).

Stress occurs when there is a load on the person who is more than its assets. If the

stress is tightened and extended, it can reduce educational performance, prevent the

student's ability to stop and the substance of the substance and other potentially devastating.

The possibility of behavior can increase. Stress is considered to be a part of the life of

students and can affect the students who have students in the strategy according to the

demands of educational life. This is because education work always meets stress activity

(Khan at el., 2012).

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Academic performance is the educational aim that is achieved by a student, teacher

or institution achieves over a specific time. The academic performance of students heavily

depends upon the parental involvement in their academic activities to attain the higher level

of quality in academic success. The students are quite emotional especially females. They

are take stress in everything at school level. A lot of factor that influence in their study like

present pressure, teacher’s attitude towards their study, home strictness, future and job

tensions (Hussain et al., 2013).

These considerations have motivated the researchers to venture a study on the

impacts of stress on the students’ academic performance. The researchers believe that this

study will contribute to the students because as of now, stress seems to be more widespread

than ever causing interference with human intellect, emotional and interpersonal

functioning. Thus, this is required in order for the study to identify themes of the students’

performance related to the stressors and to formulate possible measures to reduce it.
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Conceptual Framework

Independent variable Dependent variable

Average Grade Impacts of Stress on the

Academic Performance

Figure 1. A paradigm showing the relationship between the independent and

dependent variable of the study.

The paradigm shows the independent variable and independent variable of the

study. The independent variables composed of Average Grade. While, the dependent

variable shows the impacts of stress on the academic performance.

Statement of the Problem

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The study aims to determine the impacts of stress on the academic performance of

grade 12 ABM students at Santo Tomas National High School.

It specifically seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What is the academic performance?

2. What are the impacts of stress on the respondents?

3. Is there a relationship between the impacts of stress on the students’ academic

performance?

Research Hypothesis

This study guided by the following hypothesis:

There is no significant relationship between stress and the academic performance

of the respondents.

Scope and Limitations

This study will look into the impacts of stress on the students’ academic performance.

Only 38 students from the Grade 12 Executives will be the respondents of this study that

will be conducted at Santo Tomas National High School, S.Y. 2018-2019.

Significance of the Study

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This study focuses on the impacts of stress on the academic performance of Grade

12 ABM students. Vital results of this investigation could highly significant and beneficial

especially to the following:

This study is beneficial and important to the Grade 12 ABM students to know the

impacts of stress on their academic performance.

This study will help the parents. This will serve as their guidelines in educating

and motivating their child to enjoy their studies and guide their children on their studies.

This study will help the teachers to know what to do and how to advice their

students regarding to the impacts of stress on student’s academic performance.

Moreover, this study will help the researchers to provide them information and

investigation of their present study. It will guide them by providing the correct or accurate

data which will complete their research. They will broader their minds and this will serve

as their strength, courage and accomplishments for this will be a guide and reference to the

future researcher.

Lastly, this study will serve as reference or source of information of the future

researchers when they will conduct similar study.

Definition of Terms

For the purpose of clarification and better understanding of the words used, the

following key terms are defined conceptually and operationally.

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ABM refers to the educational track the respondents are taking.

Academic Performance refers to the average grades of the students.

Average Grade refers to the number that representing the average value or final grades of

the respondents.

Impact refers to the outcome that has an effect on the average grade of our respondents.

Grade 12 refers to the students who will be our respondents.

Stress refers to the physical, mental or emotional factors that the students feel.

Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter represents a review and summary of literature and studies related to

the impacts of stress to the students’ academic performance that helped the researchers

provide information for the enrichment and understanding of the study.

Stress: An Overview

Stress as the interaction between the three fundamentals perceived as the perception

of coping ability, and the perception of the importance of being able to cope with its

demand. Different from many previous definitions of stress, this formulation clearly

integrates the transactional process that is believed to be central to current theories of

academic assessment. Stress is simply seen as a mismatch between demand and capacity

on the difference, the insight of these two elements, and the most important the desire or
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the motivation that one feels to answer all the requests are at the heart of the construction

(Aikens et al., 2000)

Moreover, Gunnar (2003) defined the explanation of academic stress is the anxiety

and stress that comes from schooling and education. There is regularly a lot of

compressions that comes along with following a degree and one's education. There is

studying homework, tests, labs, reading, and quizzes. There is the stress of doing all of the

work, balancing the time and finding time for extra-curricular activities. Academic stress

is particularly hard on school students who are often living away from home for the first

time. Its study shows that teachers expect work to be completed on time. Students may

miscalculate the amount of time it takes to complete reading and writing tasks, to print out

replicas of their work. Stress and its displays, such as stress, depression, and tension, have

always been seen as a common problem among people in different businesses and

occupations. In the last few times, the alarm has previously been motivated by the

proliferation of books, research reports, popular articles and the growing number of

organized workshops, aiming to teach people how to handle with this individuality.

Furthermore, Baumeister and Exline (2000) cited that stress provides a complex

concept of stress, it says little about how stress affects human academic and other

performance. There is important variation between researchers about the direct and indirect

properties of several suppose different factors which have to create stress in any situation.

Direct stress special effects are those experienced by the mission capacity alone unrelatedly
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of any psychological are developed from psychological stressors related to task load

requirements. There is an acceptable line that is mutual with these two, and they can

sometimes not be distinguished. This fact made their departure and measurement extremely

difficult.

Students with high stress tend to be slower and more considerate in their action of

various aspects of specialized purposes. For example, these persons give the impression to

have particular difficulty with the carryover role. With the connection between this

function and work memory, scientists have imagined that the extra stress present in highly

nervous subjects probably withdraws resources that can then be used in work memory for

activation and rehearsal as needed for the carrying operation. Although it has been

challenged that high stress individuals may simply be less qualified to be subject to

inability and not stress different studies have given an indication that professional

competence is not satisfactory to explain the phenomena. Instead, it has directed our

sympathetic towards resource reduction models. Specifically, it has been said that concern

and disturbing thoughts compete for the limited pool of resources Ashcraft and Kirk

(2001).

Stress is typically defined in two categories, short-term and long term. Stress is

experienced for a short period of time and is usually caused by a traumatic event. Acute

stress is sometimes considered as beneficial and can create motivation. Its study further

provides an example where a student is approaching a deadline, which is causing the

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student stress. The stress that is caused due to this deadline is considered good because it

is temporary and hence helps the student to focus and complete their task before the given

time. A student being stressed during an examination is a very common depiction. Some

of the symptoms by which stress is identified include a headache, shortness of breath, and

dizziness. A certain amount of acute stress can be seen among everyone and student pilots

are no exception. There have been studies that show that students who have a just started

their flying lessons suffer from more acute stress than pilots who have a commercial pilot

license. Other reasons that can cause acute stress among pilots have delayed flights, long

duty schedules, and in-flight emergencies. Situations such as delayed flights not only cause

stress but also affect the pilot’s performance and can result in a pilot error (Seki et al.,

2002).

Academic Performance

Academic performance is the educational aim that is achieved by a student, teacher

or institution achieves over a specific time. Academic performance depends on the school,

teacher and staff management. This is measured either by examinations or continuous

assessments and the goal may differ from an individual or institution to another. Especially

teachers play the main role in the academic achievement. Academic achievement is a

period used in school when a student does well in academic’s performance. Academic

performance is the successes which demand from parent’s family and friends. They achieve

or do well in an area of the school and do well in their studies. Academic performance is
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not only degree it is the identification of any students. All the successes in every field of

life depend on the academic achievement. The academic performance of students seriously

depends upon the parental involvement in their academic activities and to achieving the

advanced level of excellence in academic success (Barnard, 2004).

Academic performance is one of the most vital considerations among students in

higher educational level. The academic performance can be illustrated by grade point

average (GPA). Despite living in the millennium area where education is accessible to all,

there are still some differences in performance among the students. Several studies

identified internal and external factors associated with academic performance. Stress is one

of the factors that have negative effect on the mastery of the academic curriculum (Keyt et

al., 2008).

Academic achievement as demonstrated using scores on tests has the end of the

years been used to determine the competence of a student their classroom. The total mark

in the course is a measure of a student’s average academic performance across the courses

being offered in any given class. This research points out it incorporates all the learning

outcomes expected of a student in his/her courses. The outcome in subjects or mark is a

more generally used measure of academic success. Thus allows it to be compared with

other studies where measurement of academic achievement is one of the study variables.

The output of any course of study reflects the success in academic performance. Learning
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process depends on the learning and experiencing for academic achievement (McKenzie et

al., 2004).

Relationship of Stress and Academic Performance

Student can be stressed due to so many stressors, such as academic reason, financial

problem, health problem or loss of close family member or friend, etc. The main stressor

identified in this study was academic related. There was no negative correlation between

stress level and academic performances of the students. Higher academic performance can

be achieved even with a higher level of stress, if the students are able to manage their stress

well. It is the person’s ability to face the everyday challenges that will determine whether

he/she will be stressed or not (Hanz, 2008).

Females felt stress more than males in severe, high, and medium level of stress.

There was no low level of stress and no correlation between stress level and the entrance

programs. Academic performance found relating to fear of doing a mistake, feeling of

competition or comparison, unilateral headache, worrying, and poor concentration.

Students with poor concentration had significantly decreasing grade in the senior high

school year. Interestingly, worrying, feeling of competition or comparison, and fear of

doing a mistake correlated to increasing grade in some terms. Specifically to poor

concentration, there were medium linear associations with fatigue, poor memory, feeling

confused, feeling sad, feeling angry or irritable, changing appetite, and headache from

stress (Skewtch, 2010).

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Poor concentration was the only stressor significantly correlated with poorer

academic performance. Poor concentration also correlated with physical, cognitive, and

financial problems. The recommendation is to keep watching those issues in order to early

detect problem about academic performance (Lonatche, 2010).

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses details of strategies and approaches to be answer the research

problem. The topics are research design, locale of the study, respondents and sampling

procedures, research instrument, data gathering procedure and analysis of data.

Design

The study will use the descriptive quantitative design employing the survey

correlational method. To gather the needed data a survey questionnaire will be used in the
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study. Responses will be measured and analyzed through weighted mean, percentage ranks,

frequency distribution and pearson product moment correlation.

Locale

The study will be conducted at Santo Tomas national High School, Sto. Tomas,

Isabela for the school year 2018.

Santo Tomas National High School has thousands of enrollees in the K-12

Curriculum and its subbed as a habitat of human excellence that continuously produces

professional achievers.

Sample and Sampling Procedure

The respondents of the study will be the Grade 12 ABM students who are enrolled

at Santo Tomas National High School, Santo Tomas, Isabela.

Total Enumeration Sampling technique will be used to compute for the entire

population. With the desired sample, stratified sampling will be used to enable getting more

samples from the Senior High School with Grade 12 ABM enrollees. Random sampling

will also be used to identify the samples.

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Research Instrument

The research instrument used in the study will be the survey- questionnaire. For the

purpose of this study, the researcher made use of structured questions by Barreca and

Hepler, 2000 to save the respondent’s time and gather necessary data. It consist of 10

questions that will determine the desired data. Using survey questionnaire with the rating

scale of (4) Highly Influential, (3) Influential, (2) Least Influential, and (1) Not Influential,

the researchers will be able to gather concise and precise information that will be used to

answer the research questions.

Data Gathering Procedure

The researchers will follow a protocol. The researchers will forward a letter asking

permission from the principal and the teachers during the conduct of the study. After which,

floating of questionnaire will be done and will be collected after answering by the

respondents to ensure a hundred percent retrieval.

Analysis of Data

The data gathered or collected will be statistical treated to answer the questions

posed in the study. Statistical tools in the analysis and interpretation of data are the

following:
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Frequency count will be used in the analysis of the demographics of the

respondents.

Percentage will be used as numerical analysis on the distribution on the

description of the personal characteristics of the students - respondents and teachers-

respondents.

Weighted mean will be used to determine the status if grammatical competence

of grade 12 students.

Ranking will be used to describe the positional importance of them in relation

to other items.

Pearson Product Moment Correlation will be used to determine the degree

of relationship between and among variables.

Part I. Profile of the Students-Respondents

Please indicate your average grade for the first grading during first semester.

Average Grade: ________

Part II. A Survey –Questionnaire on the Impacts of Stress

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Direction: Kindly check the box in the given column that correspondents to the assessment

in the impacts of stress. Please be guided by the scale below.

Numerical Rating Value Verbal Interpretation

4 Highly Influential

3 Influential

2 Least Influential

1 Not Influential

4 3 2 1
With regards to the impacts of stress on the academic
HI I LI NI
performance, I…

 Cannot pay attention in class.

 Study but have trouble passing

tests/assignments.

 Do not understand what my teacher teaches.

 Have too many assignments.

 Feel like I have too much pressure due to the

result of the examination.

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 Feel like my teachers don’t understand me.

 Feel sad/ depressed during class hour.

 Am not sure if I am able to do well in school.

 Feel anxious or frightened about school

problems that I can’t really describe.

 Have trouble remembering the lessons.

This instrument is adopted from Barreca and Hepler (2000).