Monitoring and Management of Stress: A study of Engineering Students using Digital Electronics Meter

Abstract

Stress embodies the experience of emotions or bodily strain. Stress may be experienced in two ways i.e emotional or physical. Emotional stress tends to be found there where the situations perceived by people are tough and intriguing. So far as physical stress concerned, it is the reaction of the body due to various triggers, the pain experienced after surgery is an example of physical stress. There is a participation of ‘control’ and ‘tension reduction’ in stress management which takes place in stressful situations by making emotional and physical changes. In order to know how much changes takes place, it is important to know the level of stress and the dire need for attaining the change. Our present educational system has become quite mechanical and stressful, and fails to nurture an all round development of the personalities of the students. Therefore, an urgent need of an hour is to remodel the education system, so that it may fulfill the dreams of our Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi who defines education - a system of an all-round drawing out best in child and man, in body, mind and spirit. Any educational system, which does not aim to develop the students in a holistic manner, will fail to produce true human being since they are going to contribute significantly in the society in various ways. The present study is a scientific effort in stress management of engineering students. The students (males as well as females) were opted from the four common streams of both Universities viz. i) Civil , ii) Computer, iii) Electronics & Communication, and iv) Mechanical Engineering and two engineering universities. The Stress level was assessed with the help of a self-structured questionnaire. ANOVA was performed to study whether there is a significant difference in the factors influencing stress on the basis of gender, age, engineering streams and nature of University. The three types of stress considered for the study include: academic stress, personal stress, financial stress. Further, difference of perception was also accorded for Stress Relieving Strategies. For analyzing inter-group differences on the basis of age, engineering streams post hoc Tukey was performed. The study indicates that there is a significant difference in the factors influencing academic stress, personal stress and stress Relieving Strategies on the basis of different streams of engineering. There is also a significant difference in case of the financial stress factors with respect to the gender. In this experimentation, the researchers investigated the effects of various drills on physiological parameter GSR monitored through Digital Electronic Meter. After taking the permission from ethical committee for conducting this experimental study, the respondents were also requested to sign a consent form. There were two groups, Control and Experimental group. The Experimental group had 200 students, who were exposed to various stress management strategies as reported in section. Furthermore, it was found that the mean GSR value decreased under the stimuli of i) Yogic Breathing; ii) Musical Religious Hymns; iii) Flute Music; and iv) Saxophone Music. Results also indicated that the effective Stimuli for managing stress of Engineering Students was listening to flute, followed by yogic breathing. Like any research study, the present study also has some limitations. One limitation is that of the time of experimentation. The participants’ subjective feedback at t=300 seconds would have added more inputs and deepened the analysis. Further, this study can be extended and repeated experimentation may be performed. This would help in finding out whether participants’ GSR levels are usually reduced by the four stimuli included in the study. This is an initial attempt and results are encouraging. Repeated experiments will also help in finding out how long do the lowered GSR levels remain. In addition to GSR (skin conductivity), the other physiological parameters like Breathing Rate, Pulse Rate and Blood Pressure could also be included for analysis. It is time to think intensely about managing and controlling, stress as it is leading to depression and tackling it, is an urgent concern. Academic Stress can severally hinder academic performance as well as adjustment in life. The suggested research will help reduce stress, improve efficiency and productivity of the engineering students. This endeavor may help in plummeting bad habits that emerge from stress like drug addiction, smoking and drinking. Their physical and mental health will improve. This study can be extended to students of other colleges and public enterprises. The study will also be extremely useful for students of Medical and para-medical sciences. The suggested techniques can be adopted for managing stress in educational institutions.