Perceived Stress and Academic Motivation: A Comparative Study in Medical Beginners

Abstract

Introduction: Stress is one of the variables which may relate with academic performance of medical students. Along with it Academic motivation also came in to light in last decade. Motivation which drives our actions can be variable as Intrinsic, Extrinsic or Amotivation. Present study aimed to study the relationship between academic motivation and perceived stress in medical beginners. Material and method: Cross sectional questionnaire based study was conducted in Department of Biochemistry, SBKS MIRC. 140 first year medical students enrolled as study group. Level of stress was detected by self reported PSS score and motivation was assessed by self reported Academic Motivation questionnaire. Results: Study found that among recruited participants 43.57% (61) were males and 56.43% (79) were females. Mean Perceived Stress score in stressed and non-stressed group was 21.54±5.31 and 10.47±1.55 respectively and significantly higher in stressed students compare to non stressed students (p<0.001). Mean PSS score in male students is 18.52 and female students is 21.49. Comparison of motivation parameters between stressed and nonstressed group found highly expected significant correlation (p <0.001) between Amotivation with PSS score (OR- 0.747; 95% CI 0.650- 0.859, p<0.001). Conclusion: This study confirms that the prevalence of perceived stress is high among medical students and this may be correlated with their Amotivation. Our further interest would be to follow these students during their academic career and evaluate the academic effectiveness of the students