Perceived stress variations in relation to gender, year of study, and employment status of teacher-trainees in selected universities in Central Region, Uganda

Abstract

Transition from high school to university comes with challenges and opportunities that are stressful to the teacher-trainees. The study aimed to establish whether variations of stress existed between gender, year of study, and employment status of teacher-trainees in universities in the Central Region, Uganda. This cross-sectional quantitative study adopted a stratified sampling strategy to select programmes and simple random sampling to select participants using random numbers. Data were collected from 554teacher-trainees using a self-administered questionnaire and analysed using means, t-tests, and ANOVA. The findings revealed that although both male and female teacher-trainees experienced stress, females (mean=2.31) presented a slightly higher level thanmales (mean=2.30). The findings further revealed that stress increased as one moved to years two and three. The year two mean scores were slightly higher (mean=2.39), followed by those in year three (mean = 2.38) and lastly by year one (mean=2.17), and the observed F=11.57 had a highly significant level of (p=0.000<0.05). Additionally, working teacher-trainees experienced higher stress levels as indicated by a slightly higher (mean = 2.80) compared to their non-working peers (mean =2.31). The findings further revealed a negative students’ t-test (-0.524) and the level of significance (p=0.875 >0.05). Thus, university managers should provide an enabling environment, create awareness regularly about mental health through counselling. Universities should also create a supportive environment and activities that can help student to achieve their academic goals. A work-study scheme can be adopted to help needy students work and study from the same institution.