Reviewing the Literature: The Facts

LITERATURE REVIEW ARTICLE: Stress and Quality of Life Among University Students: A Systematic Literature Review

• APA reference:

  • Ribeiro, Í, Pereira, R., Freire, I., Oliveira, B., Casotti, C., & Boery, E. (2017, April 19). Stress and quality of life among university students: A systematic literature review. Retrieved April 14, 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452301117300305?via%3Dihub
    

• Type of review:

  • Systematic literature review
    

• The problem being studied

  • There is association between quality of life and stress level in university students? What are the potential variables that influence this association? Therefore, this research aimed to analyze recent scientific productions about stress and quality of life in university students.
    

• Search criteria:

  • Stress reduction and college students

  • Quality of life and college students

• The results

  • This study identified 142 articles in the scientific literature, but only 13 articles were classified as eligible according to the previously established criteria, highlighting the lack of studies that address the theme under investigation. Among these, quality of life was frequently negatively associated to stress and factors as insomnia and burnout were also associated with its deterioration.

  • One of those studies pointed out that individuals with chronic insomnia exhibited significantly lower quality of life

  • Finally, students of medical sciences had the lowest scores in almost all QoL domains and it was associated with depression symptoms.

  • Previous finds also revealed that medical students present a worse physical health associated with emotional exhaustion and sleep difficulties.

  • Evaluating nursing students, it was observed that 33.92% experienced moderate or high levels of stress, which was negatively associated with QoL.
    

• The conclusion

  • In sum, the results of this systematic review high- lights the negative association between stress and QoL in university students, through the deterioration of various aspects related to physical and mental health. Also pointed out that factors such as Burnout, sleep disorders and depression can maximize this negative association, deteriorating even more the QoL. It is pointed out, the reduced number of studies that address the raised issues together (i.e., stress and QoL in university students), as well as, their restriction to the students from medical sciences and the small number of studies - only one identified item – of postgraduate students in master's or doctoral degree from several knowledge areas.

• Suggest for further research

  • It is important to point that QoL and stress are outcomes that could be evaluated by different psychometric instruments, complicating comparisons among studies.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Can we learn to manage stress? A randomized controlled trial carried out on university students

• APA reference:

  • Saleh D, Camart N, Sbeira F, Romo L (2018) Can we learn to manage stress? A randomized controlled trial carried out on university students. PLoS ONE 13(9): e0200997. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200997

• The problem being studied:

  • The prevalence of stress among university students, only a fraction of students ever seek professional help. . The option of online interventions could appeal specifically to students who do not seek professional help.

• Hypothesis:

  • Would online interventions help college students to seek help for stress related and mental Health issues?

• Experimental design:

  • This protocol used a randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of an online stress management intervention for university students. The inclusion criteria included the following: being a student at a French university, having mastered the French language, being aged between 18 and 30, and having an e-mail address and access to the Internet. The subjects were randomly allocated into one of the two groups: an experimental group (those who followed the program) and a control group (those who did not follow the program). The subjects in the control group were informed that they had been randomly assigned to a waiting group, that they would not be following the program during the study, and that they could follow it afterwards if they so wished. The study followed the CONSORT 2010 Statement’s advice about randomized controlled trials.

• Results:

  • A total of 90 participants started the research study after being allocated into the two groups and sending an email confirming their participation after this stage, with 49 participants in the experimental group and 41 in the control group. A total of 55 students finished the study up to the first post assessment (of whom 20 were in the experimental group and 35 in the control group), and 47 students completed the second follow-up post assessment three months later (17 in the experimental group and 30 in the control group).

• Conclusions:

  • We noted an improvement in self-esteem just after the intervention in the group that followed the program, which was maintained after three months of follow-up. As a reminder, before the intervention, self-esteem was higher in the control group than in the experimental group who benefitted from the intervention. However, this difference disappeared after the intervention and after the follow-up assessment three months later. The results show a significant reduction in the experimental group between the start of the intervention and just after it for the anxiety/insomnia and somatic symptoms of the GHQ-28. However, this difference did not maintain significance after three months of follow-up.

• Limitations:

  • Our work has a certain number of limitations: the size of the sample, the measures given by questionnaire only, a follow-up of only 3 months later, and the attacks of November 13th, 2015 in Paris, which could have had a psychological impact on the studied sample. Moreover, over time there was a loss of participants; we faced this problem during the feasibility study in 2015, which led us to use an incentive, as Fridric and his team recommended [90]. Nevertheless, despite this incentive, our sample remained small. It is therefore still necessary to improve this intervention and pursue research that resolves the methodological problems raised by this type of intervention.

• Suggestions:

  • Improve the intervention, for instance, requests for more concrete examples of certain exercises.