Perceived Sources of Stress among Junior & Mid-Senior Egyptian Dental Students
Abstract
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the sources of stress among dental students enrolled at Pharos University in Alexandria (PUA) - Egypt, and to explore the role of gender, level of undergraduate study and residence with parents on perceived stressors.
Materials and Methods: A thirty-item self-reported modified version of the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire was adminÂistered to 537 junior and mid-senior undergraduate dental students during the academic fall semester 2010, with a response rate of 79.89%.
Results: Workload, performance pressure, and self-efficacy beliefs constituted the most stress-provoking factors. Female students experienced greater stress than males for all stressor items except for “Self-Efficacy Beliefs†and “Faculty & Administration†with no statistically significant difference by gender. Mid-senior dental students registered higher levels of perceived stress for “Workloadâ€, “Self-Efficacy Beliefsâ€, and “Personal Factors†stressors in comparison to their junior peers. Those students who lived away of their parents were at higher risk of perceived stress than those students who lived with their parents. “Uncertainty about future dental career†was the first best predictor variable by gender. Whereas, “Difficulty of classwork†was the first predictor variable by both level of undergraduate study and residence with parents.
Conclusion: Female dental students had higher mean overall problem scores compared to their male counterparts, mid-senior students showed some higher perceived problems compared to junior students, and students who lived away from their parents revealed higher levels of perceived stress.
Key words: dental students, perceived stress, gender, level of undergraduate study, residence with parents.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).