Discussion
The aim of this report is to investigate the perceptions of Hong Kong university students over
different years of study. We want to find out the causes or factors for academic stress among
university students, the consequences of academic stress among university students, and the
relationship between academic stress and study effort.
The results of the questionnaire show that university students find difficulty completing
assignments. The survey indicates that both male and female students think that it is difficult
to finish the coursework. The reason for this situation may be due to inadequate course
preparation. By looking at the data on course preparation, we found out that most students
spend less than 1 hour studying per day. Inadequate study time may be due to a tight
university schedule, part-time jobs, or extracurricular activities. It may also be because of
students wanting a moderate study load. Without adequate preparation, students may find
it hard to understand and follow the teacher in the next lecture. They may miss the key
element needed to finish the assignment. This factor of academic stress causes some health
problems for the students. The results demonstrate that a substantial majority of students
reported sleeping 5 to 6 hours per day, which is less than the recommended quantity of 8
hours. Short sleeping time may be due to their daily workloads from university, such as
assignments, quizzes, and projects. Sometimes students may need to sacrifice their sleeping
time to meet deadlines for their tasks. There are several problems for students not getting
enough sleep, such as obesity and poor mental health. It may also cause students to feel
sleepy in class and lose attention to the lecture. It is hard for a sleep-deprived brain to focus.
This may create a vicious cycle that makes students feel more difficult to complete
assignments.
Overall, the questionnaire gives good results to the research questions in the report. It shows
the factors of student academic stress (difficulty finishing assignments), the consequences of
academic stress (inadequate sleeping time), and the relationship between academic stress
and study effort (inadequate course preparation).
Our results show that the factors contributing to academic stress are homework set by
teachers and time management by students themselves, which is the same as the results in
the previous study (Lin et al., 2009). However, the previous study also included stress from
examinations or tests, and stress from classmates, which we do not include in our report.
According to Aoki (2019), their research shows that parents with higher expectations can
result in much more academic stress for the students. Comparing our data, engineering
major students showed increased expectations of academic success from parents, probably
because engineering is linked with intellect.
We got some limitations in the report. First, the sample size of the report is small. There
were only 30 participants to complete the survey for this project. The sample size may not be
diverse enough to fully represent the whole population of university students. It is
recommended to extend the data collection time to capture more data. This allows for a
larger sample size because more people can take part in this study. It is also useful for
longitudinal studies or research projects that require long-term data collection in the future.
Besides, since the questionnaire collected data from university students that come from
different places and different universities, the findings may be affected by cultural or
contextual variables specific to the studied location. These differences may not show the
generalizability of students that come from other cultures and study environments. It is
recommended to compare academic perceptions in different cultures and study
environments. Find out how cultural influences, educational systems from different places
may affect students' attitudes toward the workload, study time, sleeping time, and academic
experiences.