The Validity of the Science Student Stress Inventory Using a Sample of South African High School Students

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Abstract

Stress, a condition of mental and physical exertion brought about as a result of harassing events or dissatisfying elements in the environment, has been found among teachers of science. If science teachers experience stressful conditions in their work, do students also experience stressful conditions in the learning of science, especially as studies showed that one of the sources of teachers’ stress is the students. The literature on science teachers’ stress is still scanty while nothing is available on science students’ stress. What are the factors or conditions which present or aggravate stress among science students? What are the most important stress factors to be reckoned with in the design of curricula and their instruction? These are some of the pertinent questions which need to be addressed in contemporary science education. A logical beginning step would be the need to find a valid instrument which is capable of identifying stress among science students. This study, therefore, in the main sought to find a valid and reliable instrument for identifying the factors or groups of factors perceived as bringing stress to bear on secondary level science students. It also sought answers to the questions raised above. An instrument, The Science Student Stress Inventory (SSSI) developed by Jegede & Okebukola in 1994 was validated using a selected sample of 188 South African secondary school students using a stratified sampling technique. SSSI, which showed an initial stability coefficient of 0.83, yielded a Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.95 and Inter-group Spearman correlations of between 0.21 and 0.71 (p < 0.001) for the subgroups within the instrument. Factor analysis with orthogonal varimax rotation, using eigenvalue of 1 and an absolute factor loading of 0.4 as cut-off point produced five-factor clusters. An original 50-item instrument which resulted from the initial validation procedures has been reduced psychometrically to 47 items and the factor analysis confirmed the subgroups in the original development with a redistribution of items. Rank ordering the means revealed that the science students in the sample regarded the ‘fear of scoring low marked in science examinations and assignments’ as the most stressful factor. The least stressful factor according to the students is ‘studying science forces me to behave like a scientist’. The results also indicated that significant differences in perception of stress factors were found with location of students and their ethnic groupings.