Impact of Levels of Education on Perceived Academic Stress and Mental Wellbeing: An Investigation into Online Mode of Learning during Pandemic

Abstract

A sudden outbreak of the current pandemic COVID-19 has switches the learning to online mode which leads to an increase in perceived academic stress and a serious threat to the mental well-being of the students across the globe. The aim of the current study was therefore, to examine the impact of online learning on perceived academic stress and mental well being of the students with moderating effects of levels of education, during the current pandemic. Measures of the constructs were obtained by the online Google form which consists of the Perceptions of Academic Stress Scale (PASS) by Dalia Bedewy and Adel Gabriel (2015) and Warwick- Edinburg Mental Well-being Scale (2008), from a sample of 150 undergraduate students aged 19-25 years studying in different colleges of Bengaluru, India. Mental well -being constituted the criterion variable whilst academic stress and levels of education were treated as predictor variables. Two-way ANOVA were employed. Results show that academic stress is a significant negative predictor of mental wellbeing (r = -.083; p < 0.05), there is a significant difference in the perceived academic stress (df=2; F=2.72; p < 0.05)which increase in hierarchy (Third year & first year MD= -3.7; Third year & second year MD= -3.2) and mental well being (df=2, F= 5.314 p < 0.05) which decreases in hierarchy (Third year & first year MD= -5.8; Third year & second year MD= -5.860 ) of the students at different educational levels and a combination perceived academic stress and educational levels predicts variance in mental well being of the students(R2=0.052 ; p>0.05). It was concluded that combined academic stress and educational levels have an impact on mental wellbeing of students in online mode of learning during the current pandemic, but this impact is low (only 5.2%).