A STUDY OF ACADEMIC STRESS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN RELATION TO THEIR GENDER

Adolescence is the most crucial stage of a student‟s life as at this stage, the students become very cautions and remain anxious for their academic achievements and performances. For some students, academic stress may raise the achievement but may deteriorate another‟s performance and achievement level at the same time. The purpose of the present investigation was to explore the comparison and relationship regarding academic stress and academic performance of Senior Secondary Students in relation to their gender. 324 adolescents were selected randomly from Senior Secondary Schools of Rohtak city to consider as sample of the present study. To ascertain the academic stress level of the sample, the Academic Stress Scale developed by Kim (1970) and adopted by Rajendran and Kaliappan (1990) and Rao (2012) was administered to the senior secondary school students. The statistical techniques Mean, SD, Q-Q Plot,„t-test‟ and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (r) were applied for analyzing the collected data. The findings of the study revealed a significant difference in academic stress of senior secondary school students in relation to their gender. Girls were found to be more stressed academically than boys. The present study also explored an inverse but statistically significant correlation between academic stress and academic performance of the students. Hence, it can be stated that academic stress influences academic performance, which finally affects achievement levels of students.