Gender & Behaviour, 9(1), 2011

Copyright 2011, Ife Center for Psychological Studies & Services

3752

STRESS AND GENDER IN RELATION TO SELF-ESTEEM OF
UNIVERSITY BUSINESS STUDENTS

Moses I. Ukeh
1*
, Philip K. Aloh
2
, & Nguwasen Kwahar
1
Superlife Consulting, Makurdi
2
University of Agriculture, Makurdi

Abstract
Some previous investigations argued for and against the
fact that stress affects self-esteem of postsecondary
students. This study investigated the effects of stress and
gender on students' self-esteem. One hundred and fifteen
students stratified by level of study, ethnicity, age and
gender completed standardized measures of traditional
student stress scale and self esteem. The 2x3 (ANOVA)
was used to analyse the two independent variables
stress and gender to determine their effect on self-esteem.
Results showed neither significant differences on the main
effects of stress and gender nor the interaction effect. This
however, does not mean that differences in stress levels do
not exist among students. Recommendations are given for
educational stakeholders to take stress serious and the
need for student support services in university settings.
Introduction
Stress is an unpleasant state of emotional and physiological arousal
that people experience in situations that they perceive as dangerous
or threatening to their well-being (Auerbach and Gramling, 2008). In
simple terms, the daily circumstances or demands of life; whether it
is decisions or events that tax our personal resources to the extent
that it causes us strain is considered as stress, while self-esteem is
the measure of oneself in terms of competence and sense of self
worth. According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984) stress is a
particular person-environment relationship in which people appraise
the demands of a situation as taxing or exceeding coping resources.
From this perspective, the key to understanding stress and self
csiccn is individual's crcciions of dcnands and iIc sufficicncy of
self-esteem to respond to demands. It is generally believed that
people with high self-esteem may be better able to handle stressful
situations. This seems plausible because the perception of events

*
E-mail: superlife_consulting@ yahoo.com
Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
3753

either as stressful or a challenge is greatly determined by positive
evaluation of our abilities to cope. Certain aspects of stress are
normal and essential in providing the means to express talents,
energies and pursue happiness. When this obtains, stress becomes a
positive motivator for bolstering self-esteem. It may be reasonable
also to believe that when demands made on an individual is
perceived as overwhelming that the body cannot cope, self-esteem
will be attacked. When this happens, stress can cause exhaustion
and illness, both physical and or psychological, such as heart attacks
and accidents.

Post secondary education environment undoubtedly places many
demands on students. These demands include among others; role
overload assignment deadlines, tests, term papers and
examinations. There are students who apart from role overload at
school have to combine busy lives and demands of work or study
while trying to also balance time for friends, leisure and family. Some
also have to deal with pressures related to finding a job or a potential
life partner, make important decisions that affects their future, such
as choice of a profession and so on.
Many researchers (Ghaderi, Kumar and Kumar, 2009; Misra and
McKlean, 2000; Ross, Neibling and Heckert, 1999; Arthur, 1993)
have confirmed postsecondary school level of education as a stressful
environment. To lend merit to this position is the view of researcher
Garrett (2001) who opined that college students have a unique
cluster of stressful experiences or stressors. The general consensus
among researchers in this area is that these stressors apart from
being individually experienced do not cause anxiety or tension in
themselves, but negative effects result from the interaction between
iIcn and iIc individual's crcciion as wcll as rcsonsc.
The transition to postsecondary school creates an unfamiliar
environment where regular contact with family and old friends may
be reduced. The ability of social support to mediate the effect of
exposure to stress cannot be overemphasized. New systems of social
support must be sought and created. The task of making new friends
is in itself stressful but when successfully achieved could add to
social acceptance or recognition which inevitably increases self
esteem.
Hudd, Dumlao, Erdmann-Sager, Murray, Phan, Soukas, and
Yokozuka (2000) have posited that role conflict is a common part of
Gender & Behaviour, 9(1), 2011
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post secondary education experience. As such, they suggested that
students must learn to balance the competing demands of
academics, developing new contacts, and being responsible for their
daily needs. According to Ross, et al (1999), there are several
explanations for increased stress levels in college students. First,
students have to make significant adjustments to college life. Second,
because of the pressure of studies, there is strain placed on
interpersonal relationships. Third, housing arrangements and
changes in lifestyle contribute to stress experienced by college
students. Besides these, students in college experience stress related
to academic requirements, support systems, and ineffective coping
skills. Anyone with postsecondary experience could recount their
peculiar academic, social, financial and psychological stressors.
Academic success and other successes generally add to a sense of
self confidence, the persistent lack of academic feedback and
stagnation occasioned by frequent strikes may produce even unusual
stress to some students.
Self-esteem is a phenomenon frequently studied with stress among
students. However, there are conflicting results among researchers
regarding the relationship between stress and self-esteem. While
some support inverse relationship, others refute the existence of a
significant relationship.
Youngs, Rathge, Mullis and Mullis (1990) researched on adolescent
stress and self-esteem. Their findings indicated that as the number of
stressful life experiences increased (overall stress), the levels of self-
esteem decreased. According to them, the events causing negative
effect were stronger per event while positive events had only slight
effects. Frazier and Schauben (1994) used the Psychological Distress
Inventory to obtain information regarding stress experienced by a
group of female college students. The researchers found that female
college students experienced stress related to financial problems, test
pressure, failing a test, rejection from someone, dissolution of
relationships, depression and feelings of low self-esteem. In the same
year, results of a similar research done by Abouserie (1994) showed a
negative correlation between self-esteem and stress, indicating that
students with high self-esteem are less stressed than are those with
low self-esteem. Hudd et al, (2000) conducted research on stress at
college to find its effects on health habits, health status and self-
esteem, and found that students under greater stress exhibited lower
levels of self-esteem and reduced perceptions of their health status.
Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
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Independent researches by Caruthers (2009) and Polk (2009) from
Missouri Western State University, all part of National
Undergraduate Clearinghouse Site, on stress and self-esteem rejected
the existence of relationship between the two variables. According to
Caruthers (2009) self-esteem may have little or nothing to do with
how people perceive their levels of stress. He went further to assert
that his literature suggests that there are other factors that may
influence levels of self-esteem other than stress. In the same vein,
Poll's (2009} rcscarcI rcsulis indicaicd iIcrc was no rclaiionsIi
between stress and self-esteem. Caruthers position actually
prompted us to include gender in our study to enable us measure its
effect as well as the combined effect of stress and gender on self-
esteem.

In the midst of this controversy, no research contribution seems to
come from Africa in general and Nigeria in particular in spite of the
existence of numerous post secondary institutions and inevitability of
stress among these large student populations. The purpose of this
research is to fill the gap by providing reliable information for the
understanding of how stress and gender affect self-esteem of
university students in Nigeria. The questions asked were: 1) what is
the impact of stress and gender on self-esteem? 2) Does gender
moderate the relationship between stress and self-esteem?

We proposed three hypotheses to enable us test the above questions.
These are: 1) Self-esteem will differ significantly according to levels of
stress; 2) Gender will significantly provide the basis for differences in
self-esteem; and 3) Stress and gender will together produce a
significant difference in self-esteem.

METHODOLOGY
Setting and Participants
Students were drawn randomly from business siudcnis' oulaiion
of College of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Management
Technology (CAEEMT), University of Agriculture, Makurdi, with
demographic factors being put into consideration. About 115
participants comprising 66 males and 49 females representing
approximately 57.4% and 42.6% respectively responded to the two
types of surveys. Out of this number, 26 were in Diploma, 60 in
Postgraduate Diploma and 29 in Masters Degree class respectively.

Gender & Behaviour, 9(1), 2011
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Instruments
The Traditional College Student Stress Scale (2010) was used to
ncasurc sircss lcvcls wIilc iIc Foscnlcrg's (1965} sclf-esteem scale
was uscd io ncasurc iIc ariicianis' sclf csiccn. Scorcs on iIis
scale from research on college students generally range from 182
2571; the lower your score, the lower your vulnerability to stressors;
if you score in the middle you have a moderate vulnerability and
toward the higher end of the range - a high degree of vulnerability to
stressors.
The stress scale had 51 items and based on the rating range, the
researchers categorized the scores between 182-857 as low stress,
858-1714 moderate, and 1715 above as high. Self-esteem comprised
10 items with total score range from 0-30 on a 4 point scale. The
score between 0-15 was categorized as low and 16-30 high.

Procedure
Colleagues of two of the researchers were teaching staff at different
levels of study in the university and together they administered the
two surveys to students during regular lecture sessions. The
researcher and each assisting member staff sought the consent of the
students to participate in a research effort by anonymously
responding to the questionnaire within 15-20 minutes. The
completed survey copies were collected at the end of class, and the
teacher debriefed them on the purpose of the study. Study variables
contained in survey include 1) Stress 2) Gender (sex) 3) Age 4) Level
of Study (Class) 5) Ethnicity (Tribe) and 6) Self-esteem.

Scoring
Each item on the Traditional Students Stress Scale had stress
ratings against it and provision was made for each participant to add
up and total all the responses. The total determines whether or not a
score was categorized for each participant as low, moderate or high.
The self-esteem score for each participant was the sum of all the
responses on the 10 items. The scale is 4 points with Strongly
Disagree Strongly Agree (0-3). Scores of items with asterisk are
reversed and scored 3-0 before being summed as total.

Design/Analysis
TIis siudy considcrs iwo indccndcni variallcs. Sircss as facior A"
wiiI iIrcc lcvcls. Low, Modcraic and HigI, wIilc Ccndcr, facior D" is
a string variable with constant two levels: Male and Female. The
design we adopted was a 3x2 (ANOVA) three by two analysis of
Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
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variancc as iIc ain of iIc siudy was io scc if siudcnis' self-esteem
would differ in relation to levels of stress and gender. The responses
were coded by the researchers, and the accuracy of data entry was
verified. The analyses were performed using SPSS Version 16.0. The
results section begins with a description of our key findings. We then
present two way ANOVA analyses which have been designed to
answer a series of research questions and hypotheses.
RESULTS
The respondents were predominantly male (57.4%). Class
representation was not evenly distributed in the respondent pool. The
majority of respondents were postgraduate diploma (45.2%), Diploma
(31.3%) and masters (23.5%). This is due largely to the process by
which the class enrolment was distributed.
On stress, the low stress level respondents predominated the sample
with 77 against 35 for moderate and only 3 had scores that fall into
the high category. It is presumed that individuals with less level of
stress are better off than those with higher levels. The low stress level
category had a total of 77 respondents, 41 of them males and 36
females with mean scores of 9.27 and 10.81 respectively and a sub
total mean of 9.99 for the entire group. The mean scores for male and
female for moderate category was 6.00 and 12.25 respectively while
the total means for the group stood at 8.14. Only 2 males and a
female made up the high stress category with mean scores of 17.50
and 19.00 respectively and a total mean of 18.00 for the group. A
total mean for male and female for the combined three groups is 8.38
and 11.33 respectively and a grand mean of 9.64. The summary table
of the means for stress and gender on the three levels is represented
below and responses on self-esteem indicated slight differences
between males and female with males having lower leves than
females as reflected by the estimated marginal means of total self-
esteem score in the plot (fig: 1).




Gender & Behaviour, 9(1), 2011
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Table 1: A summary of the means for levels of stress and gender
among students


Descriptive Statistics
Dependent Variable:total self esteem score
total stress score gender Mean Std. Deviation N
low, 182-857 male 9.2683 9.74429 41
female 10.8056 10.03656 36
Total 9.9870 9.84684 77
moderate, 858-1714 male 6.0000 8.14639 23
female 12.2500 11.12838 12
Total 8.1429 9.59517 35
high, 1715 above male 17.5000 3.53553 2
female 19.0000 . 1
Total 18.0000 2.64575 3
Total male 8.3788 9.28152 66
female 11.3265 10.17224 49
Total 9.6348 9.73809 115
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) Table 2 below showing test of between
subject effects of stress and gender on self-esteem indicates no
significant differences of the main effects and interaction effect at the
significani lcvcl of <0.05. TIc inlicaiion of iIis result to the study
is that we reject all the three research hypotheses and accept the
null.
On the first hypothesis which states that Self-esteem will differ
significantly according to level of stress. We refute that there is a
significant main effect for stress: F (2, 109) = 0.34, which is a
significance level higher than probability level .05. This means that
stress is not a good determinant of self-esteem and provides the
answer to our first research question. There was also no significant
Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
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main effect for gender, sex: F (1, 109) = 0.46). The explanation here is
that males and females do not differ in terms of their self-esteem
scores, compelling us to reject the second hypothesis. There is
correspondingly no significant interaction effect: F (2, 109) = 0.51.
This indicates that there is no significant difference in the effect of
stress on self-esteem for males and females. Based on this
conclusion, we do not only fail to accept the third hypothesis but also
answers our second research question that gender does not moderate
the relationship between stress and self-esteem.
Table 2: Summary table for ANOVA on the effects of stress and
gender on self esteem of students


Tests of Between-Subjects Effects
Dependent Variable:total
self esteem score

Source
Type III
Sum of
Squares df
Mean
Square F Sig.
Partial
Eta
Squared
Noncent.
Parameter
Observed
Power
b

Corrected
Model
652.223
a
5 130.445 1.400 .230 .060 6.998 .478
Intercept 3334.530 1 3334.530 35.779 .000 .247 35.779 1.000
tstress 205.685 2 102.843 1.104 .335 .020 2.207 .240
sex 51.372 1 51.372 .551 .459 .005 .551 .114
tstress *
sex
125.387 2 62.693 .673 .512 .012 1.345 .161
Error 10158.438 109 93.197
Total 21486.000 115
Corrected
Total
10810.661 114

a. R Squared = .060 (Adjusted R
Squared = .017)

b. Computed using alpha =
.05




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3760

Fig 1: Graphical representation of stress and self esteem of male and
female students

DISCUSSION
Overview of Results
The results did not support the initial hypotheses that significant
differences would be found between the self-esteem of students for
males and females due to stress. These findings further invalidate
those of Youngs et al, (1990); Frazier and Schauben, (1994);
Abouserie, (1994); and Hudd et al, (2000). However, the fact that a
substantial number of students (35) reported moderate level of stress
against (77) low, indicates differences in stress level among students
as university education is beseeched with stress inducing situations,
even though we could not establish significant differences in relation
Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
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to self esteem. One other likely reason for the predominant low levels
of stress the researchers found could not be far removed from the
undemocratic nature of the Nigerian university environment which
compels students to be resilient thereby avoiding stress evoking
situations. Another likely factor could be the absence of support
services like counselling, which may have doused their perception of
stressful events. The research findings however, are supported by
CaruiIcrs' (2009}; and Poll's (2009} siudics.
It is surprising that a Masters student obviously married and above
31years will report that registration, making new friends and
attending an athletic event as the only stress events encountered for
the past twelve months with 122 total stress score far less than
minimum of 182 for the scale. Such a student is at least expected to
have had concerns about future plans, be commuting to campus or
work or both, financial difficulties as a family person and student as
well as academic demands. This view is highly corroborated by
Lazarus and DeLongis (1983) as cited by Gadzella and Carvalho
(2006) that some stressors might be obscured by values and/or
constraints of a culture, and therefore, considered unimportant or
even unacknowledged by the individual experiencing it. They also
addcd iIai sircssors nay also idcniify onc's crsonaliiy. TIc
researchers argued that a person with a Type A personality, with an
aggressive look on life, may perceive and experience severe stress
than a type B personality with a more relaxed view on life may
perceive and experience mild stress. It is therefore reasonable to
infer (and this may call for another interesting research ) that most
of iIc siudcnis' awarcncss of sircss nay Iavc lccn influcnccd ly our
prevailing academic values that abhor hard work and astute
academic achievement, which could have evoked stress as well as a
culture which promote patronage rather than merit. Also, responses
on the self-esteem survey are essentially Guttmann structured, such
that responses to preceding questions determined the next. But
majority of the responses indicate either clear misunderstanding or
disregard leading to haphazard responses. For example, a response
of strongly agree on item 7 of self-esteem questionnaire, require a
corresponding strongly disagree on item 8, but for majority of the
sample cases, responses for the two were all strongly agree.


Gender & Behaviour, 9(1), 2011
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Theoretical and practical implications of findings
There has been evidence of vulnerability to stress in the sample even
though majority fell within the low and moderate levels. Hence, there
is need to organise counselling services and seminars to help reduce
stress among students. Lack of significant differences of stress and
gender in self-csiccn of siudcnis liniis iIc siudy's iIcorciical and
practical significance. But as earlier stated, stress exists among
student in the sample and schools should provide recreational
centres and student unions should be planned, equipped to
encourage activities that reduce stress and improve knowledge.

Limitations of the study
The study has failed to establish a causal relationship between
stress, gender and self-esteem. However, this limitation is due in part
to reliance on self-reported measures which cannot be objectively
proved. In addition, the sample size apart from being small is
restricted to one college of the university thereby making the study
context specific. More researches should be conducted at larger
university settings and larger samples to determine the differences
between variables. Such studies are needed to focus on stress
management efforts for tertiary students. Despite these limiting
factors, this research is the first study that examines the effects of
stress and gender on self-esteem of students in this university. It is
expected that it will make educational stakeholders to take stress
serious. Besides providing impetus for future research, it has
provided important insights for student experiences of stress and
how to evaluate self.
Ideas for future research
Future research should explore the relationship between stress and
academic achievement, which is a more functional construct than
self-esteem. Cultural values and personality of Nigerian students
should also be studied because it is very doubtful to conclude from
the controversial self-report of respondents to the two surveys in this
study as reflecting reality.






Ukeh, M . I. et al: Stress, Gender and Self-Esteem
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