Stress as correlate to academic performance of student midwives in school of midwifery, St Philomena Catholic Hospital, Benin City, Edo State.

Abstract

This study investigated stress as correlate to academic performance of student midwives in School of Midwifery, St. Philomena Catholic Hospital, Benin City, Edo State. Stress is a general experience in the lives of every individual irrespective of race or cultural affinity. Student midwives are prone to stress because of their different responsibilities: Although a lot of researches have been carried out on the variables that determine the academic proficiency of student midwives but it seems stress in relation to student midwives' academic performance have not received much attention in research context. The study used cross-sectional descriptive survey research type of ex-post facto design; two hundred (200) student midwives were drawn through convenient sampling procedure from St. Philomena, School of Midwifery, Benin City. Stress Knowledge and Management Questionnaire(r =

.682) was used to gather information in this study. Five hypotheses were stated and tested. The data obtained were analysed using correlation and multiple regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance. There was significant negative association between student's level of study and knowledge of stress(r = -0.144, p < 0.05). Also, the result reveals that religion was not significant on stress coping Mechanism(r = .035, p > 0.05).In addition, the finding shows that student's level of study was not significant on experienced of stress(r = .014, p > 0.05). Similarly, the finding reveals that age was not significant on coping mechanism of Stress (r = - .020, p > 0.05).The multiple correlation coefficients (R) of all the combined independent variables with academic performance of student midwives was 0.290. This implies that there is 29% association among level of stress knowledge, stress experience, coping mechanism and academic performance of student midwives. R square = .084. The adjusted Rsquare which estimates the variance on dependent variable measure accounted for by the combination of independent variables is 0.070. This implies that, all the independent variables: (level of stress knowledge, stress experience and coping mechanism) made 7% contribution to the variance in academic performance of student midwives. The researcher submitted that the student midwives should develop effective stress coping mechanism to avoid poor academic performance.