Stress There Are as Many

Stress

There are as many areas of stress and time pressures in the world as there are areas of study, and there have been a wide variety of studies conducted on the effects of stress and how human beings handle such effects. The medical field in particular jumps to the forefront when thinking of dealing with stressful and immediate situations. It is in the medical field that the daily stress of dealing with people who have contracted various diseases or who are coping with illnesses is complemented by the additional stress of oftentimes having to make quick decisions that could ultimately end up being the difference between life and death. Therefore, stress does not only affect the physician working with the patient, but affects the patient as well, who could be feeling even more stress because the illness is so personal.

One recent study presented the assertion that "among patients, 45% reported being excessively bothered by stress during the preceding month, with the chief stressors being job (70% reporting), financial worries (58%) and family concerns (50%)" (Goodrick, Kneuper, Steinbauer, 2005, p. 76). These stressful factors can lead to medical problems, but the reverse is true as well. Medical problems can lead to stress that causes even more problems. In the year 2000 a study was conducted that showed "There was an increased risk of preterm birth among women with high counts of pregnancy-related anxiety (risk ratio (RR) = 2.1, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.5, 3.0), with life events to which the respondent assigned a negative impact weight (RR = 1.8, 95% Cl: 1.2, 2.7)" (Dole, Savitz, Hertz-Picciotto, 2003, p. 14).

Other fields deal with stress as well including the educational community. Though most students do not have to deal with life threatening stress (in most cases) most still have to cope with the idea of competing against other students in a classroom, or completing and presenting a dissertation, or the effort it takes to receive and maintain good grades. These are all stress inducing situations. Discovering oneself competing in the educational field is especially disconcerting to most individuals on the university level. It is there that many students who have previously been in a more sheltered environment, find themselves away from home, in a strange environment and with higher expectations than perhaps they have ever felt before. This is especially true for international students who often are facing who new and dominant culture than what they have previously experienced.

Considering the fact that many of these international students have to cope with higher educational expectations, being alone and away from home, in a new and dominant culture and under deadlines to complete their tasks and assignments it is certainly understandable that these students must maintain a focus and avoid distracting situations or situations that could lead to overwhelming stress.

It is certainly a relevant hypothesis that states that these students could be used in a study to discern whether educating them in areas of concern, before they attended an international university of their choice.

Such education would be used to enhance their educational experience(s) and perhaps ensure an improvement in the way they perceive those experiences.

To accomplish a task such as this study demands a methodology would have to be used that provides comprehensive data for the researcher. This methodology would include focus groups, questionnaires and selective charting. Certainly the methodology used in this study would be to ensure that as much data as possible was elicited from a number of different sources. The subjects of this particular study will likely be much more educated than in the past and more in tune with how education can assist them in becoming acclimated into a new society. One recent study shows that; "A larger percentage of global immigrants today are highly educated and affluent and many are now permitted to maintain dual citizenship" (Moloney, 2007, p. 1061).

Recently "a study of 32 U.S. immigrant groups found that although nearly all immigrants are more educated than those who remain in their home countries, immigrants vary substantially in their degree of selectivity, depending upon the origin country and the timing of migration" (Feliciano, 2005, p. 135). It is imperative, therefore, to select students for the study who will likely be more representative of their home country's culture than the anticipated adoptive culture. Using a methodology that is conducive to engendering thoughtful responses from educated individuals is imperative in order to have a comprehensive study.

It makes sense that since the study is going to be used to study an important portion of the educational system, the subjects should come from a number of different arenas, but primarily from the educational community, and should also encompass international and immigrant students from a variety of cultures.

The subjects will be broken down into different groups. The first group will be comprised of approximately twenty-five individuals from European countries. The second group will be comprised of subjects from Latin American countries and the third group will be made up of students born and raised in the United States. Each group will have 25 subjects, each of which will be requested to fill out a two-page questionnaire. One other group will be composed of a selection of five students from each of the other three groups. This group will be considered the focus group. They will be asked to fill out a questionnaire, and additionally they will be asked to attend a two-hour session for a more in-depth discussion of the results of the questionnaires. Obviously the focus group will have to be convened after the results from the questionnaire have been gathered and analyzed.

With that being accomplished, the focus group will be asked for a more complete analysis of the answers garnered from the questionnaires. Since this study seeks to be a representative study of the international student community it is important that a community with a diverse enough citizenry be used in order to select the subjects. The community must contain, at the very least, a university with a diverse base of students from a variety of countries.

Once the educational institution has been chosen, the researcher will seek to gain permission from the school officials to conduct the study there. After gaining permission, each subject will be given a questionnaire and asked to complete the form and turn it in within a one-day timeframe. The questionnaires will be gathered and analyzed by the staff. It is projected that this analysis will take at least thirty days. After the thirty days, the focus group will be invited to a discussion session as related above. Finally the data will all be analyzed and results generated.

The questionnaires will be designed on a question/answer formula, with the requested answers coming in short essay form. Three separate questionnaires will be used, one for each group. Each will be directed with questions geared towards the particular student groups.

Each questionnaire will present a number of scenarios for the subject who will then be asked whether they had ever experienced such a scenario in their private life, and how they felt about such an experience. Each scenario will attempt to engender the same type(s) of feelings as they were felt during the situation in reality. It is important that each scenario make social sense to the particular group in order to gather realistic answers and data.

It is projected that the specific responses to the questionnaires will lead the researchers to a general understanding of the every day situation(s), feelings and reactions of international students to interactions taking place in the educational settings which they commonly experience.