ACADEMIC STRESS AS A PREDICTOR OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN CHEMISTRY IN ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated academic stress as a predictor of secondary school students' Chemistry achievement in Enugu State, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The predictive correlational research design was adopted for the study. A total of 5,333 Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students offering Chemistry in public secondary schools in Enugu State constituted the population, out of which 600 students were sampled using multistage sampling procedures. The instrument for data collection was the Perception of Academic Stress Scale (PASS), validated by three experts from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach's Alpha which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.82. Students' Chemistry achievement scores were obtained from school records. The data obtained were analyzed using simple and multiple linear regression. The findings revealed that 1.1 percent of the variance in Chemistry achievement scores was predicted by students' academic stress. Furthermore, all dimensions of academic stress (stress related to academic expectation, stress related to school work and examination, and stress related to academic self-perception) were significant joint predictors of Chemistry achievement, with expectation-related stress positively predicting achievement while workload and self-perception stress negatively predicted it. The conclusion drawn from the findings was that external academic expectations can motivate Chemistry learning, but workload pressure and self-doubt impair it. It was recommended among others that Chemistry teachers should balance academic expectations with manageable workloads to reduce student stress.