Lab Report Stress Levels on City College of New York Students Abstract Introduction There is a common experience of stress among City College of New York (CCNY) students. The hypothesis is that students with longer commutes and less sleep will experience higher stress levels. The study acknowledges the CCNY students’ stress levels and inquires about strategies to mitigate these stressors. Methods To collect data for this study, an anonymous survey was distributed to sixty-two CCNY students. The sections in the survey were demographics, stress factors, and actions toward mental health. Demographic questions included age, race/ethnicity, major, and year of college education. Questions regarding stress factors incorporated workload, job, and other stressors, while questions about hours spent on activities that relieve stress were also asked. Results The results of the data show that commuters receive more sleep compared to participants who do not commute. Discussion The hypothesis is not fully supported and further research is needed to attest to the correlation between sleep, commuting time, and stress of college students. Introduction High demands of academic work combined with challenges of personal and social life, often create a significant amount of stress that can negatively affect a student’s well-being. This study aims to analyze sources of stress among City College students and investigate the impact of variables on their stress levels. Past research articles such as, “Sources of Stress Among College Students”, by Ross et al., provide a comprehensive overview of factors that contribute to stress among college students. Based on the results of the research article, a majority of students experienced stressors other than academic work. Ross et al. emphasize the importance of attending workshops and seeking counseling to manage stress to improve one’s mental health. Similarly to Ross et al.s’ findings, this study hypothesized that CCNY students who have longer commutes and get lower amounts of sleep will experience higher levels of stress. Commuting time and lack of sleep are both significant stressors that can negatively impact a student’s health. Overall, this study recognizes the significant impact of stress on CCNY students and aims to provide valuable insights into specific variables that contribute to their stress levels, while identifying effective strategies to help students manage stress to succeed academically and personally. Methods The first step in this study was to create an anonymous survey containing questions regarding commute time, sleep, and stress. The survey was divided into three sections titled demographics, stress factors, and action toward improving mental health. Each section had multiple-choice options with the inclusion of an open-ended option, giving participants the ability to accurately display their answers. The demographics section asked questions about age, gender, race/ethnicity, year of college education, number of classes, and major/minor. The stress factors section asked questions regarding workload, hours spent studying, amount of sleep per night, commute time, stress from work, and family stress. A stress scale from one to ten was used to determine the stress level of participants. Low-stress levels were associated with numbers 1-3. Numbers 4-7 described moderate stress, while 8-10 described high stress. The actions towards improving one’s mental health section served as a follow-up to see if any of the participants took action to decrease their stress. Questions such as activities participated in to decrease stress, time spent on activities, and success of activities in relieving stress were asked. The option to choose multiple activities was provided as well as an open-ended section, giving participants the ability to add activities not listed in the survey. A scale of 1-5, 1 being not much and 5 being plenty, was used to describe how much the participants felt the activity relieved their stress. The second step of this study was distributing the anonymous survey to CCNY students. This was done by posting the survey to an English writing course’s discussion board and randomly asking students on campus to complete the survey. Results A total of sixty-two college students participated in the study. The majority of participants were first-year college students, with second, third, and fourth-year students making up 8.1%, 9.7%, and 14.5% of participants. More than half of the participants were 18 years old, while the others ranged from 19-23. 50% of the participants took 5 classes, 33.9% took 4 classes, while the remaining 16.1% took 7, 6, 3, or 1 classes. The majority of participants majored in biomedical sciences while others had STEM-related majors. Most participants did not have a minor. The majority of participants were female, with 33.9% being male and 1.6% being nonbinary/gender nonconforming. Figure 1. Ethnicity of participants Figure 1 shows the collected data on the ethnicity of participants. The stress factor section of the survey showed that the majority of participants received a decent amount of work while the rest received a lot, an overwhelming amount, or little to no work from classes. When asked how many hours per week were spent on school-related work (studying, homework, etc.), the majority of participants chose either 4-6 hours or more than 10 hours, while the rest chose 8-10 hours, 6-8 hours, 3-4 hours, 1-2 hours and less than one hour. Figure 2. The data collected shows how students view their stress levels on a scale from 1-10 Students were asked how stressed they were on a scale of 1-10, the results of which are shown in Figure 2. Participants were given the option to list other factors that contribute to their stress. These included weather, health, relationships, thinking of the future, Sophie Davis(accelerated B.S/M.D program), sports, and financial issues. Figure 3. Activities participants use to alleviate stress Students were asked if they took any actions toward their mental health and asked to list them (Figure 3). When asked how long participants spent per day on the activities, the majority chose 2 hours a week. When asked how successful these activities were in alleviating stress on a scale of 1-5, the majority responded with 3 and 4. Figure 4. Amount of sleep received by commuters and non-commuters In Figure 4, the correlation between the amount of sleep commuters receive and non-commuters receive is shown. Table 1 shows the number of people who agree to have job stress and family stress and is arranged by the number of hours they commute or if they do not commute at all. Table 1. Number of participants who stated to have job or family stress based on the amount of hours they commute or whether they are noncommuters Discussion The hypothesis was not fully supported by the results obtained from the conducted survey. There is no distinct correlation found between all three variables of sleep, commuting time, and stress. Although those who commuted for a shorter amount of time, dealt with more family and job stress, we can’t conclude this was due to their sleep and commuting time. While commuters may deal with the stress caused by their family members, noncommuters have to deal with the stress of being newly independent. They cannot rely on their family to take on household chores such as cooking, cleaning, or washing the dishes. This can be a major stressor for noncommuters. One finding of the study was that students who participated in activities for longer periods of time felt that it was successful in relieving stress. The randomization of participants allowed for the exclusion of bias. Limitations of this experiment include not asking the most appropriate and specific questions when figuring out the correlations hypothesized. Future research and experimentation can be done to surpass the presented research with appropriate brain scans or stress tracker readings to accurately test stress levels. Addendum How Stressed are you Survey References Ross S, Neibling B. Heckert T. 1999. Sources of Stress Among College Students. College Student Journal. 33(2). [accessed 2023 Mar 27; https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do Poster