Authors: Kaye W. Nelson, Shelley A. Jackson, Darwin B. Nelson, and Robert Smith
The paper is about the "lesser studied facts" that positively and negatively impact graduate students. It discusses studies conducted on grad education's influence on emotional wellness
The paper deals with student perceptions about personal wellness and strength to handle stress. The authors believe educators can provide students assistance in healthily managing the demands and pressure of graduate school.
Factors used in the paper include:
* Perceptions of personal wellness
* Stress Management skills
* Academic success
* Program satisfaction
Some stress areas discussed were:
* workload
* internship requirements
* expectations of faculty
* expectations of and from family
* working to support oneself? Financial worries
It was assumed, (and subsequently assessed)that
-> emotional exhaustion and spousal stress was likely to be greater in female students
and -> International students, students of color, students with disabilities, gay men and women have higher stress levels than non-minority populations
A survey was conducted with respect to the self perceived levels of:
* personal wellness
* stress management
* progress in program
* program satisfaction
Survey results were then aggregated based on gender, age, race, degree, income, program accreditation status, marital status, number of children, income, hours per week, hours of partner's work per week
It also focussed on the use of medication to handle demands and stress of graduate students
The survey was conducted by mail responses from 406 or 999 students contacted. The Personal Skills Map (PSM) from Nelson and Low, 1988 was used as the survey instrument or assessment model.
15 personal skills scales that provide a positive approach to the self assessment of skills considered important in healthy living were highlighted in PSM, but the authors used two of these scales that had a total reliability quotient of 0.83 and 3-point scale answers (most descriptive of me, sometimes descriptive of me and least descriptive of me)
Some important results:
* Students satisfied with progress in their program perceived a significantly higher ability to manage stress than students not sure if they were satisfied/weren't satisfied with their progress.
* Students without children have lower ability to manage stress
* Students taking medications had lower perception of wellness and higher stress than those who weren't taking medications.
The paper does not mention or talk about mentoring or any other solutions people are taking towards stress management. This could give a good perspective on perceptions as well because I believe perception of stress may change over time with positive mentoring or counselling.
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Paper: Effects of peer mentoring on types of mentor support, program satisfaction and graduate student stress
Authors: Grant-Valone, E. J., & Ensher, E. A.
The paper discusses the effects of peer mentoring, focussing mainly on types of mentor support and on how they affect program satisfaction and graduate student stress.
Three main stress areas the paper identifies/assumes with respect to graduate students over undergraduate students is that many of them have:
* a feeling of insecurity
* decreased self esteem
* increased workload
Mentoring, an essential part of graduate education includes but is not limited to:
* assistance with financial aid
* job placement
* research projects and training
* emotional support
* offering instrumental and psychological support
Traditional mentoring limits itself to offering instrumental and psychological support.
According to the authors, peer mentoring is more effective since it encompasses:
* information sharing
* job related feedback
* confirmation
* emotional support
* personal feedback
* friendship
It is assumed that Peer relationships can last longer than traditional mentorship and peer mentoring has a better turnout rate and reliance than traditional mentorship.
A peer is:
* information provider
* Supporter of student
* Role Model in most cases
The study assessed 35 peer pairs. The instrumentation was:
-> 2 scales to measure psychological and instrumental support
For psychological support:
-> 11 items such as "my peer mentor is someone whom i like to socialize with", "my peer mentor gives me advice about working with faculty" etc
-> Participants scored each question on a 5-point scale where 1 meant "strongly agree" and 5 meant "strongly disagree" and the numbers in between modeled the rest of the criteria of transition.
For assessing instrumental support, the scale used was "Percived Stress Scale" (PSS)
14 questions were asked such as: "How often have you been able to control irritations in your life" and "how often have you felt you were on the top of things"
These questions were posed to both the peer and the student subject and the corroboration between peer mentor and the student subject (protege) was measured on a scale of 5 to 1 (very often to never)
This was used to measure satisfaction.
The results of the study were aggregated as high contact vs low contact pairs.
* The psychological and instrumental support provided by high contact peers provide better program satisfaction
* Strong evidence that there is more psychosocial support from peers than instrumental support
* Psycosocial support helped reduce stress levels
* Students who were feeling more stressed asked for more support from peer mentors
* Peer mentors actually may have increased stress levels in students by providing too much information too quickly
* Rewarding peer mentors would help, but how?
The paper presses to ensure contact between the student and the mentor. This would be effective in the relationship in the long run.
I drew a lot of lessons from the paper and it reinforced the feeling that peers may be a way to vent out graduate student stress. However several questions remain, how would we ensure high contact with the help of computers? How would we ensure the peer and the student work interchangeably? and both must be able to reap some benefits for their efforts? To what extent would students open up to their "competitors"? Would it make sense to ensure pairs happen by combining a senior and a junior of the same major or interests? Or would it be better to allow the user to add his or her own peers? Which one allows better instrumental support?
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Paper: A Thesis: College Stress and Symptom expression in International Students
Author: Uma Shenoy Ajit
The paper talks about how well college students from various international cultures fare at US Universities; with a specific emphasis on how they deal with stress and what are the symptoms they show with regard to stress.
Discusses the term "culture shock" to refer to the problems of acculturation and adjustment
Explains how Migration involves "crossing language, communication, interpersonal, social and cultural boundaries" and how this is assumed to increase the the possibility of stress and/or development of disorders"
It discussed the potential sources of stress for any international student, it could involve but not be limited to:
* being minority-group member in the US,
* worrying about relatives back home,
* losses associated with migration,
* fear of learning new things, and
* "cultural conflicts"
In addition to these, they may face monetary problems, (initial?) language difficulties, problems adjusting to a new educational system problems settling into a new society.
It is observed by the author that immigration to the United States is on the increase each year. She claims that United States is the most culturally diverse country in the world.
She argues with the general notion that Asians have a somatic style of expression. The popular notion is with the bias about Asian viewpoint being a unitary mind-body self, as opposed to a dualistic view held in western nations. It is believed that Asians focus on physical distress leading to an over-representation of somatic symptoms.
Her investigation "also suggests that it may be useful to examine different symptoms such as somatic symptoms and depressive symptoms in immigrant groups, as well as in local groups. This is opposed to the traditional view that holds that immigrant populations may have predominantly somatic reports, versus Western populations that have typically psychological symptoms."
I found good takeaways from this paper. We need to be able to incorporate International Student needs into the application as studies like this one suggest that International students would have different (and hence more?) stress levels and feeling of being isolated as against native students. If this view is supported by the interview findings that we propose to do with the President of Clemson Area International Friendship, we might look into this seriously. We are already seeing a good cluster of differences in responses from non-US citizens amongst our survey's Graduate Student respondents so far.
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