Academic stress, perception, and attitude towards online learning of sports science students

Abstract

To further understand how stress academic and it’s affected factors are experienced by sport science students, the cross-sectional study was conducted. Using a purposive sampling technique, the authors approached many sports science students from a heterogeneous group in Jakarta. An email with an informed consent to obtain permission to join the research and an explanation of the study objectives was sent to each prospective applicant; after determining their willingness to participate, the online questionnaire was sent to 91 sports science students (28 females and 63 males). A Perception of Academic Stress Scale (PAS) questionnaire (which is a dichotomous questionnaire about the perception and attitude towards online learning) and an open questionnaire to obtain recommendations for improvement was sent to the students. Descriptive analysis and chi-squared test were used to analyze the data. The obtained findings indicate that, the students experienced various level of academic stress (most of the students experienced a moderate level of stress, and only a few experiences a high level of stress, 74% and 13%, respectively). Most of the students though that online learning was not pleasant and expressed the attitude that they disagreed to continue online learning lectures, 60.44% and 86.81%, respectively. The crosstabulation analysis using the chi-squared test confirmed that the more unpleasant was online learning, the higher was the level of stress (sig 0.004), and the higher was level of stress, the more that students disagreed to continue online lectures (sig 0.06). An adequate support, such as comprehensive teaching resources and concrete guidelines, should be provided to reduce academic stress and foster a positive perception and attitude toward online learning courses.