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Running Head: COURSE WORKLOAD AND TIME MANAGEMENT AFFECT STRESS

How does Course Workload and Time Management Affect Stress?

Bridgett Jackson

Rochester Institute of Technology

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COURSE WORKLOAD AND TIME MANAGEMENT AFFECT STRESS

Abstract

Students are looking into more difficult courses and degrees, which can directly lead to stress

and create negative impacts like less satisfaction with life. Add on items like jobs, extracurricular

activities, and relationships it is no surprise that college students are prone to exhaustion, impaired

academic performance, poor social interactions, and even dropping out of college.

Daniel Law (2007) compared exhaustion rates in high stressed career environments (such as

nursing) to college students to attempt to understand how stressed and exhausted students can

become. A further extension of this negative impact of ineffective time management was a study done

to look at the connection between someones quality of life and how they spend their free time (Huan,

Kao, Wang, & Wu, 2010). With our study, we are trying to determine if high course load, time given to

activities outside of class (social and academic responsibilities) compares with high level of stress.

A secondary measurement is whether this stress is connected to how effectively students plan

assignments. The sample that identified as having a high workload reported more stress than in low (see

Figure 1). With the time management variable, the difference in the high and low group was that the

high workload group had slightly higher stress than the low workload group (see Figure 2). It would

seem most beneficial to compare this study with others that include more detailed variables allowing for

greater interpretation and less confounding of the data.

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COURSE WORKLOAD AND TIME MANAGEMENT AFFECT STRESS

How does Course Workload and Time Management affect Stress?

How difficult is college, really? Is it as terrible of a period in life as the college students love to

complain it is, or are they unnecessarily grumbling? Smith and White (2015) mention that an increasing

number of people are attending college due to larger salaries, and how this might mean that a

requirement could possibly come to graduating with higher level degrees to fight the effects of

competition. With this expectation, students are looking into more difficult course loads and degrees,

which can directly lead to stress and any following negative impacts like less satisfaction with life.

Workload

College is a well-respected route after graduating high school that can simply become

overwhelming when considering ineffective time management skills and stress control (Dipboye, Macan,

Phillips, & Shahani, 1990). Add on jobs, extracurricular activities, relationships, etc. it is no surprise that

college students are prone to exhaustion, impaired academic performance, poor social interactions, and

even dropping out of college. Daniel Law (2007) compared exhaustion rates in high stressed career

environments (such as nursing) to college students to attempt to understand how stressed and

exhausted students can become. Law had the students self-report using a fraction of the already

validated Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, 1986), and compared these results to another validated

subscale by Kejner and Lodahl (1965) so as to use a students job as another exhaustion measurement.

He found students with large course loads find it difficult to separate themselves from their school work

and this makes them vulnerable to rates of exhaustion that potentially could be a problem for their

psychological and physical health.

Time Management

A further extension of this negative impact of ineffective time management was a study done

intended to look at the connection between someones quality of life and how they spend their free
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time (Huan, Kao, Wang, & Wu, 2010). The researchers defined this free time as intervals in which people

have no requirements and can do as they please. It was discovered that the way people spend their time

is significantly more important to how much time they actually have free. Brandon Lang (2012) took this

idea into mind when he focused on this time and stress management with students who worked and

didnt work. Working itself doesnt negatively impair a students academics or overall feeling of

connection to their campus; less time available than their counterparts, these working students take

some time from their social interacting to effectively manage stress and course work. If students have

such high stress, then what are the reasons or the predictors of the stress levels? If known, can they be

managed and prevented?

Purpose

With this study, we are trying to also determine if high course load, time given to activities

outside of class (like jobs, relationships and any extracurricular groups) compares with high level of

stress. A secondary measurement is whether this stress is connected to how effectively students plan

their assignments. We assume that there is a significant correlation between level of stress, amount of

course load and skill of time management/assignment planning.

Methods

Participants

The participants were originally made up of one-hundred and thirty-six college students. They

were asked by the test administrators, on a college campus, to complete a survey either by hand

(pen/pencil and paper) or through an online component. Students were asked to read a consent form

before moving on and used self-report to answer the surveys questions. Twenty-three students data

had to be taken out of the results due to incomplete information in the participant data (used for the

workload measurement) and invalid answering of some measurement questions, leaving the study with
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one-hundred and thirteen students for the sample. The majority of the students were female and white,

which could lead to more questions about the study and/or management of stress. Only one students

data had to be taken from the results because of the same reasons as listed above for the time

management measure. Some of the questions pertained to three specific measurements for the study:

workload, time management, and stress.

Measurements

In the workload measurement, the students were how many hours they spent doing

assignments, in class, doing extracurricular activities, and in their job (if they work during the school

term) over a week span, which was all summarized for a final workload score. The workload score was

given a median-split into a high workload or a low workload depending on if the answers to all of the

above questions were greater than or equal to a median of forty-five; fifty-nine participants were in the

high workload, and fifty-four were in the low workload (see Table 1). With time management the only

question used was how many days, before the due date, they planned out the assignment; ranging from

a week before to a day before the due date. These answers were also given a median-split; they were

divided based on if the answers fell above and equal to or below a median of three. The questions for

the stress measurement were the sum of three items (comfort level on campus, coping ability, felt on

top of things) from Stephen Cohens Perceived Stress Scale (Oskamp and Spacapan, 1988), and included

one in which the answers needed to be reversed to have the results be consistent. All of the questions

used a scale, from zero to four and increased with lower amounts of time students took to plan, of how

frequently they pertained to the students. The results concluded that the measurement of stress

indicated a Cronbach alpha of 0.772 which is a fair reliability.

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Data Analysis

This study was a simple descriptive statistical analysis (using mean and standard deviation)

focusing on a sample of college students. The independent variables for the hypotheses were time

management and workload and the dependent variable for both was only stress.

Results

The sample that identified as having a high workload reported more stress than those in low

(see Figure 1). With the time management variable, the difference in the high and low group was that

the high workload group had slightly higher stress than the low workload group (see Figure 2). Within

the data, there was one participants data that was missing due to incomplete data, but doesnt seem to

have affected any level of the results.

Discussion

Differences

Since the differences in perceived stress was only a slight increase in higher workload and no

difference in planning assignments neither hypotheses were supported. This conclusion can possibly be

due to some confounding variables not taken into consideration like how students handle stress, their

level of social responsibility and relationships, and their overall happiness. There seemed to be more

women in this study, which could somehow could have skewed the results when considering the

possibility that women have deeper connections and relationships, so they might have better resources

for handling stress. Also, an explanation could be that the students are able to manage their

responsibilities well, or that they also have a reliable and abundant amount of resources available to

them considering the testing variables.

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Workload Comparison

While our study was trying to find a comparison between higher levels of workload and stress,

Smith and White (2015) went more into focus on how social relationships affected the level of degree a

student earned and their performance within that degree. They looked further into the type of major,

specifically STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) majors, rather than just the amount of

work the students indicated they had, which is possibly limiting in itself. It doesnt take much in account

of other variables, like the amount of time put in class settings and working on the assignments; but

they tried to equal this limitation by having the social variable studied, which is where our study limit

itself. We did not seem to take into account the effects that a students ethnic, economic, and social

identity played in their possible stress levels.

Time Management Comparison

We also did not measure the time students put into studying, which is a large aspect of college

life that Daniel Law (2007) accounted for in his exhaustion study. Within our study we could have

included this variable in our time management measurement so that it wasnt just based on the singular

variable of when students planned their assignments. Law included a measurement of coursework

similar to ours, but did not include variables of social responsibilities. His exhaustion measurement,

looking at the level of effort students put into their work, not only how much time they report they

spent on their classwork, could have been a variable giving further ratings of stress that could have led

to a significant difference in the stress measurement. Another aspect we should have taken into

consideration was student academic performance (Dipboye, Macan, Phillips, & Shahani, 1990) that

could have a hand in a students stress levels. Even if students can seem to handle all their

responsibilities (academic and social), be able to effectively manage social events and assignments that

they have, they could still report high stress if they are not happy with their academic standing.
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Limitations and Strengths

For this study, we had multiple limitations and strengths. Our measurement of workload

included a more comprehensive list of variables to test, and we took the specific measurement

questions for a test that had already been validated for stress. On top of these points, our sample of

college students was a decent size. On the other hand, we only used a section of the validated stress

scale to test our specific hypotheses, a limited sense of workload, and separated all results with a

median-split which could have some effect in limiting the way our data was measured and presented. A

bigger problem seems to be that our sample was too specific with little diversity (see Table 1). All of

them were college students and generally around the same age; the majority were white and many

were female. Even though deaf students were included, there still werent many within the study, and

that variable itself was not a consideration within the measurement of stress. This variable, if taken into

consideration, could possibly have shown unique stressors that dont exist within the hearing

population. All of these aspects (see Table 1) mean that, even though the hypotheses seem important,

the results cant truly be generalized to the larger public, or even necessarily to other college students at

different colleges.

Interpretations of Study

The inference based on this studys results is that time management and workload have a

relatively small effect on a students stress levels. An important question to now be considered is why

neither of these variables, especially workload, do not seem to give much effect to stress. Is it due to the

students in the sample? Was there not enough diversity or maybe not enough students in the sample

itself? A better way to determine what effects stress could possibly be to do a longitudinal study that

compares different aspects of high-stress environments. Take into consideration performance, social

relationships and responsibilities, and other related variables to determine what aspects are the best
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indicators of stress. But the future study/studies should try not to be too specific so that the results can

still be generalized to the larger public population.

Conclusion

There was only a small difference found in stress levels when comparing students with high

workloads and low workloads. But when looking at how they manage their time/assignments, there was

no difference, or not enough to credit it. What could this mean for students that are overworked and

burning out from all the work they say they have? How could the data suggest that there isnt enough of

a connection between their workload and stress? It would seem most beneficial to compare this study

with others that include more detailed variables allowing for greater interpretation and less

confounding of the data.

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References

Lang, B. (n.d.). The Similarities and Differences between Working and Non-Working Students at Mid-

Sized American Public University . College Student Journal, 46(2), 243-255.

Law, D. W. (2007). Exhaustion in University Students and the Effect of Coursework Involvement. Journal

of American College Health, 55(4), 239-245. doi:10.3200/jach.55.4.239-245

Lodahl TM, Kejner M. The definition and measurement of job involvement. J Appl Psychol. 1965;49:24-

33.

Macan, T. H., Shahani, C., Dipboye, R. L., & Phillips, A. P. (1990). College students' time management:

Correlations with academic performance and stress. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(4),

760-768. doi:10.1037//0022-0663.82.4.760

Maslach C, Jackson SE. Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press;

1986.

Oskamp, S., & Spacapan, S. (1988). The social psychology of health. Newbury Park: Sage

Smith, E., & White, P. (2014). What makes a successful undergraduate? The relationship between

student characteristics, degree subject and academic success at university. British Educational

Research Journal, 41(4), 686-708. doi:10.1002/berj.3158

Wang, W., Kao, C., Huan, T., & Wu, C. (2010). Free Time Management Contributes to Better Quality of

Life: A Study of Undergraduate Students in Taiwan. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(4), 561-573.

doi:10.1007/s10902-010-9217-7
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COURSE WORKLOAD AND TIME MANAGEMENT AFFECT STRESS

Tables and Figures

Table 1

Demographic Information [Mean (SD)]

High Workload Low Workload

(n= 59) (n= 54)
Gender (% female) 73 67
Age (years) 19.95 (SD) 19.69 (SD)
Race/Ethnicity (%)
Asian 7 6
Black/African-American 10 7
Hispanic/Latinx 7 4
White/Caucasian 74 81
Other 2 2
Class (%)
1st year 19 28
2nd year 42 39
3rd year 24 20
4th year 10 11
5th year 2 2
6+ years 3 0
Hearing Status (%)
Deaf (by culture) 0 7
Deaf (raised in 0 2
spoken language)
Hard of Hearing 7 7
Hearing 93 83

Table 1: Summary of results

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Figure 1: Results of stress within the workload groups

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Time Management Group

Figure 2: Results of stress within time management groups