estudyanteng ina

Running head: COLLEGE STUDENT MOTHER 1

Estudyanteng Ina: A Phenomenological Study on the Perceived Academic Stressors and Coping

Strategies of College Student Mothers

Pia Roelen C. Pahati

Bulacan State University

COLLEGE STUDENT MOTHERS 2

Estudyanteng Ina: A Phenomenological Study on the Perceived Academic Stressors and Coping

Strategies of College Student Mothers

Stress has been a part of our daily lives. Everyone experiences that kind of phenomenon,

yet not everyone can cope positively with it. Other individuals are able to cope with small

exposures to stress. Some even work more productively when under pressure. However, stress

can impose negative effects on a person especially when it becomes overwhelming and the

person begins to experience its adverse effects (Rizzolo, Zipp, Seton & Simpkins, 2009).

In the context of school or educational setting, academic stress is one of the inevitable

phenomenon that equally affect all college students (Rizzolo et al., 2009), as it has been found

that college is a very stressful period for many of the students as they go through a lot of changes

—educationally and socially (Misra & Castillo, 2004). However, it is important for us to

consider that not all the stress that a student experiences during college is negative, for stress also

pushes individuals to work even harder and to reach their goals even under pressure (Rizzolo et

al., 2009; Robotham, 2008). Even if some researchers claimed that the environment in academies

are considered to be stressful which often causes negative outcomes to students’ performance

(Ahmed, Riaz & Ramza, 2013), it has also been noted that stress is a necessary part of what it

means to be in a university, and that these universities are just giving their students the chance to

experience positive stress as well as the unintentional giving of negative stress, so that they will

be equipped in their future careers (Brown & Ralph, 1999).

Academic stress arises when a student perceives that academic related demands exceed

the available resources that he or she has (Khan, Altaf & Kausar, 2013), especially when it

comes to time (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2006). According to Misra and McKean (2000), students


report that they are experiencing academic stress every semester at a very predictable rate

especially when there is an academic overload that needs to be met in a small amount of time.

The common academic stressors or the causes of academic stress, according to studies are

excessive assignments, unhealthy competition among their classmates, fear of failure, lack of

pocket money (Fairbrother & Warn, 2003), insufficient resources to perform academic work and

poor interpersonal relationships with classmates or with their lecturers (Khan et al., 2013). This

phenomenon that is present in academic institutions which is experienced by college students can

either bring positive or negative effects to them which depend on the track of the stress. When

stress leads to positive track it enhances performance—gives confidence and most excellent

ending results. But when stress moves in negative direction, students practice physical and

psychological destruction (Ahmed, Riaz, & Ramzan, 2013).

College student mother is also included in the sphere of the term ‘college students,’ yet

their perspectives and participation in the past researches are rarely seen. College student

mothers who are studying alongside with rearing their child experiences great amount of

challenge compared to the regular college students who have no child to tend to (Brown, Adansi,

& Amankwaa, 2007). Student mothers have multiple responsibilities like taking care of the child,

studying, and sometimes being a provider. Also, time constraints in school and challenges of

being financially stable are one of their usual challenges (Arguelles, 2008). However, there has

been a very limited attention in the psychological and educational literature when it comes to the

experiences of college student mothers who are raising a child while pursuing higher education

(Ricco, Sabet, & Cloughm, 2009).

With that, this study will focus on the perceived academic stressors of college student

mothers and their main coping strategies which will be revealed and indicated through their


subjective views about the phenomenon itself and how they deal with it. These subjective

interpretations that will be gathered from the first-hand responses of the participants may provide

a greater insight into the range of college students mothers' perceptions regarding the demands

and stressors existing within higher education institutions. This should also enhance our

understanding of how student mothers in tertiary education experience academic stress and how

they deal with it. This is also important as the readers will know the meaning of academic stress

through the perspective of college student mothers.

Academic Stress Experienced by College Students

Academic stress is present in educational environments (Pozos-Radillo, Preciado-

Serrano, Acosta-Fernandez, Aguilera-Velasco & Delgado-Garcia, 2014), which is commonly

incorporated with college students, as these students were found to experience higher level of

academic stress based on the past researches that has been done. However, it has also been

claimed that even secondary students are also experiencing this kind of phenomenon (Conner,

Pope, & Galloway, 2010; Khiat, 2013). It was noted that stress among college students are

rooted from adjustment to college as it is a well-recognized stressful experience, like facing

novel ideas that challenge previous views, others possibly move away from home (Lumley &

Provenzano, 2003), workloads, grade competition, lack of time to complete tasks and not having

understood the materials (Pozos-Radillo, 2014), antagonism with other students,

disappointment, failures and poor relationships with other students or lecturers, family problems

at home, curriculum and instruction (Ahmed et al., 2013).

In the study of Misra and McKean (2000), they found that anxiety, time management,

and leisure satisfaction were all predictors of academic stress. Also, they found that time

management behaviors of undergraduate students had a more buffering effect on academic stress


than leisure activities, particularly with females as they saw that females had more effective time

management than males yet experienced higher academic stress and anxiety. On the other hand,

male participants in their study were found to benefit more from leisure activities compared to

females. In line with this, the study of Misra et al., (2003), also found that women exhibited

higher reactions to stressors than men, as women are more likely to rate negative events more

seriously and more frequently compared to men. They even noted that higher levels of academic

stressors experienced by students were predicted by higher levels of life stress and by lower

levels of social support, while higher academic stressors predicted greater reactions to stressors.

When it comes to demographic profile, gender seems to play a great difference as what has been

stated on the aforementioned studies above, yet it also seems that age shows a contrasting effect

on students. Based on the results of the study of Khan et al. (2013), academic stress was found to

be higher in younger students than older college students. However, this was negated by the

study of Pozos-Radillo et al. (2014), as this study found that female university students ages 18,

23, and 25 years old were associated mostly to stress. It was also important to take note that

married students were found to experience less stress than those students who are never married

(Myers, Sweeney, Popick, Wesley, Bordfeld & Fingerhuld, 2012).

Moreover, the study of Ross, Niebling, and Heckert (2008) showed that the top five

stressors of experienced by college students are changes in sleeping habits, vacations or breaks,

changes in eating habits, increased work load, and new responsibilities, which has the same

findings with the study of Rafidah, Azizah, Norzaidi et al. (2009), as they also found in their

study that majority of the students reported that they do not get proper sleep and face nutritional

problems throughout the semester. Still with the findings of the study, they indicated that overall


students experienced moderate level of stress brought by school yet none of the stress fsctors

significantly affect the academic performance of students.

College Student Mothers

College students are found to be involved with risky sexual relationships which ascend

the risk of conception for females (DeSimone, 2010). When pregnancy occurs, the woman

carries the burden and risk of the pregnancy and in most cases even child care. College student

mothers who are studying alongside with rearing her child experiences great amount of challenge

compared to the regular college students who have no child to tend to (Brown, Adansi, &

Amankwaa, 2007). Student mothers have multiple responsibilities like taking care of the child,

studying, and sometimes being a provider. Also, time constraints in school and challenges of

being financially stable are one of their usual challenges (Arguelles, 2008). However, there has

been a very limited attention in the psychological and educational literature when it comes to the

experiences of college student mothers who are raising a child while pursuing higher education

(Ricco, Sabet, & Cloughm, 2009).

Motherhood and studying is a very difficult phase. In the study of Sears (2001), they

examined the experiences of doctoral student mothers living at the intersection of studenthood

and motherhood. They found that the demands of family and university would create specific

challenges to the student mother. It was also noted that although their participants were able to

articulate the dominant definitions of the good mother and the good student, they refute it

because they more likely prefer to balance their responsibility as a mother as well as a student. It

was also important to know that almost all of the participants in that study insisted that their

children were their first priority above anything else.


Spencer (2010) pointed out in her study that those single mothers who are in school are

the ones who need a stress inoculation because of the stress and challenges that they are facing.

In this study, single mother college students were termed as the ‘overburdened college students’

because of the considerable amount of responsibilities that they have on their shoulders. More

likely, single mother college students, alongside with attending classes, writing term papers and

studying for examinations, are also parenting one or more children without a partner, often with

little or no financial support. It was noted in this study that the usual stressors that the

participants reported in their study are financial demands, multiple role strain, deficits in social

support, barriers in organizational resources, parenting responsibilities, socially alienating

environment, low academic self-efficacy, histories of emotional loss and trauma, and elevated

levels of psychological distress.

Furthermore, it was also important to know that emotional and social support are what

student mothers need (Pare, 2009).They are academically stressed. Based on the study of Huff

and Thorpe (1997), single college student mothers worry over academic performance with strong

feelings of academic inadequacy, academically unprepared, helplessness and difficulty in finding

a time and place to study with young children at home.

Coping Strategies of College Students

The amount of stress experienced by the individual may influence his or her ability to

cope effectively with stressful situations that he or she might encounter. If this stress is not

effectively dealt with, this might cause him or her negative affect such as, loneliness,

nervousness, anxiety or even sleeplessness (Ross et al., 2008).

Some students were found to cope with stress using religious forms of coping in order to

alleviate their stress (Mah, 2011). While other study, such as the study of Lumley and


Provenzano (2003) had found that writing about the general life stress for days showed

significant reduction in anxiety state and changes in coping skills acquisition, such as decrease of

the use of denial and increase in the active coping, that pushes a person to change the situation.

Thirty-minute session of yoga, humor, and reading had been found to have similar effects in

decreasing acute stress thus, helping an individual to cope with stress (Rizzolo et al., 2009).

Based from the study of Rigsdale, Beehr, Grebner and Han (2011), engaging in specific

recovery activities during weekends, accompanied by specific subjective recovery experiences

can reduce negative psychological outcomes. They also noted that it is important for college

students to engaged themselves with resource-providing activities during leisure time so that they

will reduced the strains from their weekday overload. In other words, particular stressors

experienced during the academic work week are likely to be followed by engaging in specific

recovery activities during the weekend that may promote individuals’ experience of

psychological detachment, relaxation, and control; then individuals will likely perceive

themselves to be recovered at the beginning of a new week.

It was also found that the self-care practices of students were found to be significantly

related to their perceived stress level. Their sleep hygiene, social support, the emotion regulation

strategy of reappraisal and the mindful acceptance were found to be significant when it comes to

dealing with stress (Myers, Sweeney, Popick, Wesley, Bordfeld & Figerhuld, 2012). Another

study found that gaming interventions also help students cope with stress, especially those games

that mainly revolve around the themes of stimulation, challenge, social bonding, simplicity,

educational value, relaxation and solitude (Johnson, 2006). Lastly, in the qualitative study of

Khiat (2013), they found that secondary students who are not good in Math from their study,

used three main defense mechanisms—avoidance, denial and apathy.


The Present Study

Based on the aforementioned studies, it has been established that college students

experienced great academic stress (Pozos-Radillet al., 2014; Lumley & Provenzano, 2003; Misra

& McKean, 2000; Myers et al., 2012; Ross et al., 2008 & Rafidah et al., 2009), that females are

more likely to experience academic stress (Misra & McKean, 2000; Misra et al., 2003; Pozos-

Radillo et al., 2014), that ages eighteen to twenty five are the ages that are more susceptible to

stress (Pozos-Radillo et al., 2014), that the coping strategies gathered from past literature solely

came from regular college students (Mah, 2011; Rizzolo et al., 2009; Myers et al., 2012 &

Rigsdale et al., 2011), and that the perspective of college student mothers are not yet heard when

it comes to their perceived academic stressors and coping strategies.

This study will be conducted to better understand the academic stress phenomenon

experienced by college student mothers. The main goal of this study is to determine the

perceived academic stressors that college student mothers experienced, their responses to it, as

well as their main coping strategies in order to deal with it. Perceived academic stressors that this

study will pertain is the characteristic of a stimulus or situation which causes stress based on the

individual perspective of the participants, since stress was viewed differently by people, as the

thing that might be stressful for others might not be considered stressful by other people as well

(Putwain, 2007). Other than that, this study will codify the responses of the participants through

a qualitative approach using a phenomenological method and use that as an edge to make better

meanings when it comes to the lived experiences of the participants to academic stress.

In the previous researches, there is a considerable amount of quantitative research on

academic stress (Pozos-Radillo, et al., 2014; Lumley & Provenzano, 2003;Ahmed et al., 2013 &

Misra & McKean, 2000). And that there is a need for qualitative research design using


interviews in order to see the subjective views and perceptions of college student mothers about

the stress that they are experiencing, and their coping strategies and resources.

Research Questions

The overview of the past researches stated what the body of knowledge knew with

academic stress, I hope that this future study will be able to discover more of the individual

experiences of college student mothers experiencing academic stress through a qualitative

approach using in-depth interviews. This study will center on answering these following

questions:

1. What are the perceived academic stressors of college student mothers?

2. What are the main responses of college student mothers to academic stress?

3. What are the sources of strength of college student mothers?

4. What are the main coping strategies that college student mothers do in order to deal

with academic stress?

Method

Research Design

In this study, I will use the qualitative method of phenomenology as there is no theory of

choice. According to Flowerday and Schraw (2000), “phenomenological design is appropriate

when one’s goal is to explore a phenomenon about which little has been written,” (p.35) which is

likely the same with my goals in this study. I will also be going to collect information from

participants who are able to describe the phenomenon through their experiences, which will

allow me to organize themes, based on their responses.


According to Wahyuni (2012), the research paradigm for this study will be

constructivism. I will have the ontological position of being subjective and socially constructed

in this research. In epistemological terms, I will focus upon the details of the situation, or the

“lived experiences” of the participants.

Participants

The sample of participants will be consisted of five college student mothers. The sample

will be generated using “snowballing” techniques. The participants will 18-24 age-old college

women who were currently mothers while enrolled in college full time. Each participant will be

required to meet the basic requirements of being a mother and a full time student. All

participants that will be involved in this study are Filipino mothers with at least one child or

more that was two years of age or younger, and were enrolled in college full time.

Instrument (Appendix A)

The instrument that will be going to use in this study will be guided by the interview

questions that I will design, which will guide the flow of the interview with the participants,

specifically on following in-depth interviews.

Procedure

I will first give each participant an informed consent which they have to sign. This

informed consent contain all the things that they need to know about the research—its purpose

and its reason for being conducted. It is also indicated in the informed consent that the

information that they will provide will be held with great care and confidentiality. Aside from

that, I will also clear to them that they are free to leave from participating in the research once


they feel uneasy about it. I will also be going to explain the specific details on which they will be

contributing within this research.

The data gathering procedure will be coming from a series of in-depth interviews with the

participants through their verbal responses. . In-depth interviews with the participants, will focus

on the college mothers’ experiences about the phenomenon of academic stress—entailing their

perceived academic stressors and coping strategies, will be carried out on the participants’ home

or any place they deemed convenient. These verbal responses will be recorded using an audio

recorder, and will be transcribed verbatim by the interviewer. Body language, positions or any

initial observations to the interviewee will be noted. The initial in-depth interview will about to

last for 30 to 40 minutes

In-depth interviews will be used because it is the type of qualitative method that will

enable people to talk about their personal feelings, their opinions, as well as their experiences.

Aside from that, it also gives the interviewer the chance to gain insight into how the participants

interpret their experiences (Mack, Woodsong, MacQueen, Guest, & Namey, 2005).

Data Analysis

The data that will be gathered from the series of in-depth interview with the participants

—the audio records, and the transcribed notes of the past focus group discussions. After

collecting it, the notes from the handwritten transcription as well as the audio recordings will be

encoded in the computer. Upon encoding the data to the computer, participants will be coded

with numbers for confidentiality.

Transcripts will be read repeatedly to identify the key themes and categories, which were

then developed into a framework for coding the body of interview data. I will analyze the data


collected using qualitative content analysis, by identifying themes based on the responses that the

participants have given. After identifying themes based from the contexts, I will be going to ask

a professional or a researcher to help me check the data to perform test code reliability.

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Appendix A

Interview #1

1. Demographic Questions: Please tell me how old you are? Where are you from originally?

Where do you live now?

2. When did you begin your college degree? When did you have children? Do you work

outside the home?; where?; doing what?

3. What prompted you to decide to go to college? What experience have you had in college

or with higher education?

4. How did/does being a mother affect your decision to go on with your education?

Interview #2

1. Please read the definition of academic stress which was defined by studies. (provided by

the researcher)

a. What do you think of that definition?

b. Does that definition match your understanding?

c. Do you think there is something missing?

2. In your own view, what is academic stress?

3. As a single mother taking up college, what are the things that make you academically

stressed?

4. Why do you think it causes you to be academically stressed?

5. What is your view about education?

6. What are the reasons that make you think that you can deal with it?


7. Tell me about the way you feel during those cases that you feel stressed because of

academics.

8. Tell me about the way you think during those cases that you feel stressed because of

academics.

9. Tell me about the way you behave during those cases that you feel stressed because of

academics.

10. Tell me about your life at school.

11. Tell me about study time in your house.

12. Where do you get your strength in dealing with academic stress?

13. What are your ways in order to cope with those academic stressors that you just have

stated?

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