A Descriptive Study to Assess the Level of Stress and Coping Strategies Adopted among Students Appearing for Board Exams in Selected Schools of Shimla (H.P.)

Background: All over the world, exam stress is the main source of stress faced by the students and its impact has become a serious issue among researchers and policymakers because of increasing incidence of suicides due to fear of failure. Hence it is important to know how far the students are able to cope up with the stress. Aim: The aim of present study was to assess the level of stress and coping strategies adopted among students appearing for board exams. Objectives: The objectives of the present study were to assess the level of stress among students, to assess the coping strategies adopted among students, to find out the correlation between level of stress and coping strategies adopted among students and to find out the association of level of stress and coping strategies adopted among students with selected demographic variables. Methodology: A quantitative descriptive research design was used to collect data from 100 students by using non-probability purposive sampling technique by means of self-structured likert scale. Results: The present study revealed that the most of the students were having moderate level of stress (83%) and (56%) of students had adopted average coping strategies to deal with the exam stress whereas significant negative correlation (r = - 0.406) was found between level of stress and coping strategies adopted among students. Conclusion: The present study concluded that there is a need for school institutions to pay their attention for minimizing the stress level of students by developing competencies among students and teaching adaptive coping strategies to deal with the stress so as a result the minimum stress can increase academic performance of the students in exams.