Development of stress scale to measure stress for vietnam undergraduate students m a

國立臺中教育大學教育資訊與測驗統計研究所 NATIONAL TAICHUNG UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION Graduate Institute of Education information & Measurement 博士論文 DOCTORAL DISSERATION 指導教授：郭伯臣 博士 Advisor: Professor Bor-C

國立臺中教育大學教育資訊與測驗統計研究所

NATIONAL TAICHUNG UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

Graduate Institute of Education information & Measurement

博士論文

DOCTORAL DISSERATION

指導教授：郭伯臣 博士 Advisor: Professor Bor-Chen Kuo, Ph.D

DEVELOPMENT OF STRESS SCALE

TO MEASURE STRESS FOR VIETNAM UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

研究生：潘氏秋月 Graduate: Phan- Thi Thu Nguyet

January, 2017.

ABSTRACT

Stress becomes a significantly serious issue among Vietnam university students and

we need valid, reliable and user-friendly tools to understand it more The purpose of this present study is to develop the Vietnam undergraduate stress scale for measuring the psychological stress of Vietnam university students This study is innovative in the sense that, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, such a scale has not been developed in Vietnam as yet

In this vein, the questionnaire was administered to 1,750 (495 males and 1,255 females) Vietnam university students who participated in this research In the sample, there were 708 (34%) freshmen, 537 (30.7%) sophomores, 458 (26.2%) juniors, and 137 (7.8%) seniors undergraduates from the sciences (n=705, 40.3%) and social sciences (n=1,045, 59.7%) faculties at nine departments at four universities in the survey Each item has five Likert response options, typically being ‘never’, ‘rarely’, ‘sometimes’, ‘often’,

‘almost always’ The version of the Vietnam undergraduate stress scale consisted of 68 items was constructed The items belonged to six subscales that covered the academic, environment, family, financial, behavior, and psychology domains Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to validate the scales

This study presented new results from first-order factor model and second-order factor model by applying the CTT scores and IRT measures into structural equation modelling to find the best model-fit The expected relationship between the scales and the criterion measures was tested The data were statistically tested and a final version of 36 items was compiled Structure equation model revealed that a second-order model on the IRT scores of the items provided the best goodness-of-fit The Vietnam undergraduate

stress scale was found to have good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of the subscales ranged from 0.645 to 0.828) The results also reported the Chi-square value (𝜒𝜒2)

= 2106.07, df =582, the Chi-square to df ratio of 3.62, RMSEA=.039, SRMR=.001, AGFI=.915, and GFI=.925, which together indicate satisfactory from second-order model Furthermore, the Vietnam undergraduate stress scale is an efficient, reliable, and valid tool for assessing stress among university students

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to send my gratitude and special thanks to my supervisors, Professor Bor-Chen Kuo and Professor Mok Mo Magdalena Ching, for their wisdom, advice, patience, and most importantly their constant encouragement during my studying at Graduate Institute of Educational Information and Measurement for four years of my PhD study Without their insights and encouragement, I will not have this important day I am so lucky to be in their supervision

I would also like to thank Professor Shu-Chuan Shih, the dean of Graduate Institute of Educational Information and Measurement and all of the Committee members for their assistance and support I remembered the first stage when I begin

to write my dissertation proposal, their thoughtfulness and guidance in both academic and informal aspects was a strong step stone for me to try harder and harder

In addition, my very warm thanks go to other great professors, friends, Vietnamese students, international students, Taiwanese friends, who have enthusiastically supported me during the time I have been here in Taiwan

Finally, I would send thanks to my sweet family, my students for their endless support, patience, encouragement and warm love to me

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……….……… I

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… ……… III

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… ……… V

LISTS OF FIGURES……… ……… IX

LISTS OF TABLES……… XI

LIST OF ABBREVIATION……… ……… XIII

LIST OF SYMBOLS OF MEASUREMENT MODEL……… ……….… XV

1.1 Research Background……… 1

1.2 Vietnamese Students Stress……… 2

1.3 Purpose of the present study……… 6

1.4 Significance of the study ……… 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 9 2.1 Definition of Stress……… 9

2.2 Application of the traditional cause-and-effect model in present research……… 11

2.3 Review of empirical studies……… 12

2.3.1 Behavior problems……… 13

2.3.2 Academic performance ……… 14

2.3.3 Family involvement……… 14

2.3.4 Teacher-student relationship……… 15

2.3.5 Financial obligation……… 16

2.3.6 Psychological symptom……… 17

2.4 Pervious development of stress scales on university students……… 17

2.5 Research questions……… 22

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL 23 3.1 Sampling and setting: the description of the sample and demographic statistics ……… 23

3.2 Development of the instrument……… 26

3.2.1 Research questions……… 26

3.2.1.1 Demographic questions……… 26

3.2.1.2 Scale design ……… 26

3.2.1.3 Item bank development……… 27

3.3 Procedure for analysis the stress scale of Vietnam undergraduat students……… 29

3.4 Exploratory factor analysis approach ……… 30

3.5 Item response theory approach……… 30

3.5.1 A multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model……… 32

3.6 The structural equation modeling for CTT and Rasch……… 33

3.7 Compare and choose the ‘best’ models according to criteria between CTT/IRT and mediator/higher-order models……… 34

3.8 Data collection procedure……… 36

3.9 Ethical consideration…………,……… 36

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 39 4.1 Exploratory factor analysis approach ……… 39

4.2 Classical test theory scores approach ……… ………… 45

4.2.1 The first-order constructs based on CTT scores……… 45

4.2.2 The second-order constructs based on CTT scores……… 48

4.3 Item response theory approach ……… 49

4.3.1 The first-order factor……… 57

4.3.2 The second-order factor……… 59

4.4 Model comparison of CTT and IRT……… 60

4.4.1 First-order model from CTT scores and IRT scores……… 61

4.4.2 Second-order model from CTT scores and IRT scores……… 62

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE DIRECTION 65 5.1 Main findings ……… 65

5.1.1 Results of CTT scores……… 66

5.1.2 Results of IRT scores……… 67

5.1.3 Comparison of CTT scores and IRT scores……… 68

5.2 Strengths and limitations……… 69

5.3 Implications ……… 70

Reference ……… 73

LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 2-1 Traditional cause-and-effect research model……… 11

Figure 3-1 Procedure for analysis the stress scale for Vietnam undergraduate students……… ……… ……… 29

Figure 4-1 First-order factor model……… …… 46

Figure 4-2 Second-order model……….…… 48

Figure 4-3 MIRT Latent-variable Item-person map……… … 55

Figure 4-4 The first-order (mediation) factor with IRT scores……….…… 57

Figure 4-5 The higher-order factor with IRT scores ……… 59

LISTS OF TABLES

Table 3-1 Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents……… 24

Table 3-2 Sub-domains to be developed/calibrated……… 28

Table 4-1 KMO and Barlett’s test……… ……… 39

Table 4-2 Table 4.2 Factor loading for Maximum Likelihood Oblique Rotation of the Vietnam undergraduate Stress scale……… 40

Table 4-3 Final version of Vietnam stress scale……… 41

Table 4-4 Cronbach’s Alpha for 6 subscales……… 42

Table 4-5 Descriptive statistics for subscales of the Vietnam Stress assessment…… 43

Table 4-6 Correlation matrix of the stress subdomain……… 44

Table 4-7 Fit indices statistics for first-order……… 47

Table 4-8 Fit indices statistics for second-order ……… 49

Table 4-9 Rasch reliability analysis and Fit between data and model……… 51

Table 4-10 IRT reliability information ……… 52

Table 4-11 Correlation matrix of the Vietnam stress subdomains using MIRT scores 53 Table 4-12 Fit indices statistics for first-order IRT ……… 58

Table 4-13 Fit indices statistics for second-order IRT……… 60

Table 4-14 Fit indices statistics for CTT and IRT scores ……… 61

Table 5-1 Fit indices comparison of CTT and IRT scores ……… 68

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are allowed in titles:

AGFI Adjusted goodness-of-fit statistics

CTT Classical Item Response Theory

CFA Confirmatory factor analysis

EFA Exploratory factor analysis

GRM Graded response models

GFI Goodness-of-fit statistics

MIRT Multidimensional Item Response Theory

MPCM Multidimensional Partial Credit model

MRCML Multidimensional Random Coefficients Multinomial Logit

RMSEA Root mean square error of approximation

SEM Structural equation modelling

SRMR Standardized root mean square residual

UIRT Uni-dimensional Item Response Theory

LIST OF SYMBOLS OF MEASUREMENT MODEL

The following symbols are allowed in titles:

θ Theta (latent trait)

Ω set of all possible response patterns

m Number of categories for items

of first-year students exhibited symptoms of depression

from feeling depressed or sad to experience some health problems and changes in sleeping habits (44%) lying awake at night, reporting fatigue (45%), nervous or anxious (42%), lacking interest, motivation or energy (39%), seriously considered suicide (6.6-7.5%) (Suicide Prevention Resource Center, 2014) These statistical figures are evidences showing that stress should be treated seriously Therefore, systematic research into the topic of stress, including the nature of stress, prevalence of stress, factor leading to stress, and outcome of stress is very important

1.2 Vietnamese students and stress

Evidence showed that Vietnamese undergraduate students were under great stress In indeed, Binh et al (2013) reported that 10.5% of undergraduate students had suicidal thoughts, 4.5% of planning and 1.5% of attempts to suicide In fact, studying is very stressful in Vietnam because of cultural values One news website (C.V, 2012) used the headline: ‘The exam season or the suicide season?’ to describe the situation that every summer, many candidates committed suicide after failing the university entrance exams These students felt shameful when they failed the exams and chose to kill themselves One such case was that in 2010, an 18 year old student drank herbicide to commit suicide because she did not receive the notification about her university entrance exams Prior to that, in late 2009, one female student also committed suicide by eating La Ngon (Gelsemium elegans) because she was too disappointed about the exam result In 2006, one student hung herself after realizing that she failed the university entrance exam The above cases reflect the stress experienced by students, and one source of such stress is from their families For most families in Vietnam, entrance to universities might

determine the socio-economic status for the rest of their lives if their child can go to a university At home, parents tell their children that passing the university entrance exam

is a must The pressure is intense, especially in a country where many students from poor families need a diploma from a good university to rise to the middle class (Lien, 2013) In this study, family is to be investigated as one source of stress for Vietnamese undergraduate students

The impact of financial stress exists in Vietnam undergraduate students, according

to the news (2014), there was a first year male student who felt into a stress when he cannot afford to pay the tuition which the deadline was due This male undergraduate student acted as a thief The poorest regions in the country tend to have fewer higher education and lower levels of enrollment in higher education (The Work Bank, 2008) Even so, Vietnamese undergraduate students are worried that they cannot find the job after they graduation as a report on Vietnam Higher Education: Crisis and Response

by Thomas and Ben (2008) 50% are unable to find jobs that as many specialization, lack

of the skills needed for good performance in the work place (The Work Bank, 2008), and sufficiently proficient in English to be hired

According to The Work Bank, (2008) the situation of teaching methods, the gap between teacher and students, teacher transmit the knowledge and students listen and memorize, without requiring More importantly, Vietnamese students are facing life challenges that shape their outlook about the future In particular, research is needed on development of valid reliability scale for the measurement of stress

A number of such measurement tools for stress has developed in the past

1978: Sarason’s Test Anxiety Scale is used in different kinds of investigations (1) the

interaction between test anxiety and evaluation stressor, (2) laboratory investigations aimed at strengthening adaptive skills needed to copy effectively with evaluation stressors, and (3) applied studies dealing with clinical and educational problems

1983: Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein’s the Perceived Stress scale, designed to measure the degree to which situations in one’s life are appraisal as stressful The PSS showed adequate reliability and, as predicted, was correlated with life-event scores, depressive and physical symptomatology utilization of health services, social anxiety, and smoking-reductions maintenance

 1986: David & Fraser’s College and University Classroom Environment designed

to assess the small higher education classrooms The instrument evaluates students’

or instructor’s perceptions of the following seven psychosocial dimensions of actual or preferred classroom environment: personalization, innovation, student cohesiveness, satisfaction, task orientation, innovation, and individualization

 1991: Gadzella’s Student-Life Stress Inventory indicated different types of stressors (frustrations, conflicts, pressures, changes, and self-imposed stressors) and reactions to the stressors (physiological, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive)

as perceived by university students

In particular, previous research Quyen (2007) on stress of first year Medical Vietnamese undergraduate students made use of Center for Epidemiologic studies depression scale (CES-D2; Radloff, 1991) translated from oversea only From the original, the CES-D was designed to measure the level of adolescent depression It composes 20 items asking about adolescent’s feeling or behavior related to depressive symptom However, the drawback of such an approach is that differences in student situations (family,

income, and so on) may be another factor of depressive symptom The CES-D scale has not been as widely used with undergraduate students, but the measure has been used extensively for the community residence adults who have experienced depression events Again, researchers have been examined the experience of first year Medical students by using Student Stress Survey (Insel & Roth, 1985), however, was designed especially for Medical students indicated a relatively high health risk Overall, we have all experienced such test, here are, the two scales consisted of 60 items This approach has problems, the use of questionnaires for stress participants a shorter is an advantage, because long-test items are not necessary for stress psychometric The Student Stress Survey (interpersonal, intrapersonal, academic source, and environment source) is a two-point scale, this response

is simple but does not give the responder an opportunity to be neutral on their answer in a question Participants were 351 students, it was a small sample It did not have enough values to justify the burdens imposed on participants In particular, Quyen has done a pieces of work on stress, but she did not development the scale This research will be created the subscales, and inside subscales will have items to measure stress issues Variable is needed to be created to measure aspects of stress (behavior and psychology), sources of stress (financial, family, lecturers and environment, academic) and outcomes of stress, and that is why new scale is needed

To meet the expressed need, this study aims to develop a valid and reliable stress scale for undergraduate students in Vietnam

1.3 Purposes of the present study

The specific objecting this study are:

- to develop the Vietnam undergraduate stress scale;

- to evaluate the validity of the stress scale for Vietnam undergraduate students; and

- to measure the impact of stress on university students;

1.4 Significance of the study

The innovation of this study is to develop a stress scale using item response theory scores and structure equation model for undergraduate university students in Vietnam as a useful and acceptable tool The study is innovative in several ways First, it is a pioneer research study using item response theory and structure equation model to provide rich item information on stress gathered from the students IRT and structure equation model methods can generate many estimates including item parameters and students’ abilities (here, abilities means stress levels) in Vietnam Second, from the outcomes of the research,

we will gain a better understanding of students’ stress issues, factors contributing to their stress, as well as outcomes of their stress, and based on the understanding, to propose new strategies of advice and support for students in stress management

In summary

University students face psychological, academic, financial, family, and behavior challenges that increase their risk of stress problems This chapter also addresses the relevant literature review and inconsistent operational definitions of stress issues This study specifically focused on stress of Vietnam undergraduate students The aim of the

students The objectives of the study are: (1) to develop the Vietnam undergraduate Stress scale; (2) to validate the stress scale for Vietnam undergraduate students Many stress scales have been developed by other researchers, but the scale developed in the current study especially focus on the interpretation of stress of Vietnam students

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This current chapter seeks to understand the theoretical and empirical background of stress and critically discusses theoretical model of stress, and conceptual perspective Also, an overview previous instruments have been developed for university students to find the support for Vietnam undergraduate stress scale

2.1 Definition of Stress

A number of definitions of stress can be found in the literature, and they focused on different aspects of stress, or were developed according to different conceptualizations of the psychology and behavior involved in stress One of the earliest definition was by Cannon (1939), who developed the flight or fight theory of stress, which focused on the physical reaction under stress According to Cannon’s (1939) definition, our brain reacts quickly to keep us safe from dangerous situation by either fighting the threat or fleeing from external threats to our well-being Cannon’s (1939) theory took a behaviorist perspective Later, Selye (1976) conceptualized stress from a medical perspective, basing

on his knowledge on physiology and psychobiology areas as a medical doctor Selye (1976) considered stressors to come first as demand on the person from the environment, and then the person experienced the stress as a response to this demand According to Selye (1976), not all environmental demands were perceived as stress If the demand is only brief, mild or controllable, then it is not experienced as stress Only those demands from the environment that are perceived as severe, uncontrollable, or persistent and

experienced as stress by the person (Poltavski & Ferraro, 2003) According to Selye’s

(1976) perspective therefore, stress can be defined as response by an individual who

experienced severe, uncontrollable, or persistent environmental demands that were

perceived as harmful to their well-being In 1984, Lazarus and Folkman took a cognitive

perspective to stress in developing the contextual model of stress In this model (Lazarus

& Folkman, 1984), there were two cognitive processes in response to a stimulus The first

process involved an initial appraisal of whether the stimulus was harmful to the

individual’s well-being If the stimulus was considered harmful and relevant, then the

individual would engage in a secondary appraisal process, which involved the adequacy

of his/her own resources in meeting the demands of the stimulus In case of inadequate

resources, then the stimulus became a stressor, which then led the individual to initiate

coping strategies to deal with the stressor Lazarus and Folkman (1984; see also Lazarus,

DeLongis, Folkman, & Gruen, 1985) labeled this model as cause-and-effect model

Presented in Figure 2.1 is a graphical representation of the cause-and-effect model

Folkman and Lazarus (1984) advanced this model in Stress, Appraisal, and coping theory It proposed that ‘a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as relevant to his or her well-being and in which the person’s resources are taxed or exceed (p.152) Folkman and Lazarus proved that one or more antecedent variables can be examined as possible cause of long-range adaptation outcomes such as illness or impaired functioning Their work also showed how the antecedent person and environment variable makes final sense of the risk of stress (immediate effect, physiological change, feeling states…)

2.2 Application of the Traditional cause-and-effect model in present research

Researchers had used the Traditional cause-and-effect research model (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985) to guide this research to identify the components of causes variables that 1) Person (family, financial values) and Environment (academic, teacher-student

Person Variables

Environment Variables

Somatic Health/illness Morale Functioning in the world

ADAPTIONAL OUTCOMES

Figure 2.1 Traditional cause-and-effect research model (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985)

relationship values) are assessed their final of effect stress variable 2) Functioning in the world (behavior symptoms and psychology symptoms values) There are some supporting evidence to this model adjustment

2.3 Review of empirical studies

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression is a significant contribution to the global burden of disease and affects people in all communities across the world The World Mental Health Survey conducted in 17 countries found that on average about 1 in 20 people, young people outnumbered (Marina, 2012) Huanhuan, Wang and Wang (2009) found that in previous years, stress could affect people behavior issues from daily life, due to etiological role of excessive stress as a threat to physical and psychological health, perceived stress of university students is closely associated with a variety of maladaptive behavior, such as depression (self-blame, fantasy, withdrawal), alcohol-dependency (Pararrigopoulos et al., 2007) The most important factor showing the types of stress in life is the impact on the young people Recent previous researches have also found out that students always face problems in adjusting, competing with each other to get better grades Some students also do things like punching teachers, cursing, slandering and hurting teachers In addition, for male students, their side problems are responsibilities with getting involved in sports, recreation and also financial problems This is a good opportunity for the researcher to review and to find some possible answers that university students are likely to face a series of psychological, academic, family, environmental, financial, stress on a daily basis

2.3.1 Behavior problems

Students with high levels of stress tend to perceive themselves as health damaging behavior and more prone to practice a number of poor health habits, which are considered high risk behaviors (Beck et al., 1995, Gupchup et al., 2004) The evidence for the effects

of stress on student’s behavior is more conflicting, according to US Public Health Service, (2000), being stressed, people may fall into the habit of cigarette smoking which has been linked to a number of illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and lung disease (US Department of Health and Human Services, 1994) Stress also may play an important role

in adolescent smoking behaviors The stress-vulnerability model (Sinha, 2001) suggests that stress may directly influence substance abuse by leading to maladaptive responses to the environment When they are facing with a problem, when they have too many things dealing with at the same time, some students reduce stress having a variety of maladaptive behaviors, such as problematic drinking (Ham and Hope, 2003), and illicit prescription drug abuse (Kassel et al, 2007) which lead to the problem of behavior syndrome, and cause students at the risk of substance use and other health compromising behaviors (Kathleen, 2008) However, this is of little attention According to Engin, Cuhadar and Ozturk (2012) inability to attain the desired life standards may also result in self-blame, especially when one gets frustrated, and loses self-esteem, develops negative thoughts about himself or herself, inactivity, obesity, not applying healthy life behavior (Norle et al., 2005), not interesting in sport activities (Brown et al., 2002), irregular sleep pattern (Goodwin and Marusiz, 2008) This highlights the need for further research to improve contemporaneously with intervention

2.3.2 Academic performance

According to Lee and Larson, (2000) Asian students often have high education burden, and high expectation (Crystal et al,, 1994) For many students, taking examination, writing report papers, studying long hours, and having less free time, receiving negative feedback or lower test scores can lead students to stressful situations (Kohn, Lafreniere & Gurevich, 1991) Also, Maslach’s study (1998) concerns with the stage of academic failure and burnout particularly in people-oriented professions, and psychosocial adjustment and residency programs (Archer et al, 1991) in addition to the acquired knowledge of factual information (Gonnella et al, 1993; Mohammadreza, 2003) In addition, Spielberger and Vagg (1995) point out that achievement test scores, as well as academic performance, are increasingly used in evaluating applicants for jobs and admissions into educational programs, examination stress and test anxiety have become pervasive problems in modern society The sources of students stress were concerned about passing the course, personal desire for perfection, status of scores in the course, what friends might think about their performance, and having to learn new technology (Endres, 1992) Accordingly, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues are common among students but they are a hidden part of university life

2003) By seeking support and comfort from family members, caring for each other and taking responsibility, feeling homesick are common phenomenon among students (Kerin et al., 2007), which can lead to educational problems or even cause students to quit school (Fisher & Hood, 1988) Following up Golan et al (2002), undergraduate students reacted with increased depression to stressors arising of their relationships with family members and friends, which may be due to non-support from family environment

2.3.4 Teacher-student relationship

The experience of environment factors is highly subjective, different students having different threshold levels According to Rout and Rout (2002), people who lack support from others also have more physical and psychological symptoms than those with support Having poor interpersonal relationship at school environment contributed greatly

to the student’s experience of school-related stress

To succeed in student life, lecturers keep strong positions in student track Consistent with previous studies, major reasons given by student non-attendance at lectures were competing assessment pressure, poor lectures, time that lecturers saved for students, and poor quality of the lectures context (Fleming, 1992) Also, Bennett and Kottasz (2001) found other problems such as lecturers with poor opinion of contemporary students, lectures with low levels of regard for their student’s motivation Such lecturers might adopt poor teaching methods and low attitude Student negative attitudes to academic and attendance could indicate that they are not getting the type of training and educational development that they need Once more, students who did not enjoy acquiring knowledge for feeling nervous, or stress prior to attending the lecture session are more likely to miss

lecturers (Kottasz, 2005) An important factor that should be taken under consider financial obligations

2.3.5 Financial obligation

Talking about financial distress, according to Baum and O’Malley (2003) financial stress among university students can have negative outcomes including low academic performance, also mental health problems (Lange & Byred, 1998) Previous research by Leyton (1995) has showed financial distress to affect psychological well-being in those individuals who perceive themselves to have low levels of social and emotional support

An addition, O'Neill, Sorhaindo, Xiao, and Garman (2005) have found that effects of financial distress to include anxiety, insomnia, headaches, and depression There is a need

in deep looking at other students’ obligations such as to loan repayment for school fee, the cost of education, borrowing money for college education, books, foods, accommodation and transportation costs, the need to find jobs after school, and the academic challenge of course work A study by Prawitz et al (2006) has been described financial distress as an individual’s reaction to the condition of their personal financial situation and family arguments about money, late bill payments, and lack of emergency preparedness are financial behaviors that may contribute to financial distress (O’ Neill et al., 2006) Furthermore, Ronald, Sonya and Julie (2013) found that anxiety plays a role in personal financial decision-making and students who are anxious are sure to be experiencing a high degree of stress According to Davis and Mantler (2004), financial stress is considered as a severe issue In particular, students’ facing tuition also affects student performance These things make difficult for them to complete their academic degree in

four years Many researches have also demonstrated that student financial issues reflect growing anxiety It is important to know what matters more than negative events impact on student life With this as background, this study conducted a prospective study of Vietnam

2.3.6 Psychological symptoms

The symptoms of stress can be described into many categories including behavioural, psychological, emotional and physical This study shall focus on the most psychology common symptoms among university students According to Martin et al (1989) stress has been shown to be related to health damaging behaviors The feelings of nervousness

is the perfectly normal response that students experience when faced with many challenging tasks For example, Clark and Watson (1991) found that anxiety and depression share a significant general affective distress and negative common symptom

2.4 Pervious development of stress scale on university students

Research on student’s stress has a long history Stress is one of important research fields that attract many researchers The study has been carried out firmly to learn about stress or to learn how stress brings impact on other aspects such as educational and psychological measurement Some well-known researchers in this field are Sarason and Stoop (1978), Gadzella et al (1991), and Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, (1983) More other researchers come during 1990s and early 2000s Those researchers have also introduced different stress scales as part of their findings

Much of the published literature has established generic life-stress scale, the Test Anxiety Scale was developed by Sarason (1978), which consisted of a graphic rating

scale The development of this scale involved 520 university students The scale itself comprises of 37 items Based on test anxiety scale, Sarason (1978) have suggested that deleteriously affected by evaluation stressors Some studies show that highly test anxious people perform relatively poorly under an evaluative condition and that their performance

is hindered by excessive self-preoccupations concerning their failure and its consequences (Sarason & Stoop, 1978) Schachter (1959) suggested that social affiliation has anxiety-reducing effects However, further research needs to clarify the dimensions

Hence, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) developed by Spielberger et al.,

(1983) is a self-report rating scale designed to measure two dimensions of anxiety from depressive syndromes, state anxiety and trait anxiety It consists of 40 items, 20 items for assessing trait anxiety and 20 for state anxiety, rated on a 4-point scale from ‘Almost Never’

to ‘Almost Always’ However, Bieling et al (1998) argued that the STAI Trait does not assess pure anxiety Caci et al (2003) indicated that the STAI may not provide an accurate assessment of anxiety As for the solution, these studies suggest that a new measure of state and trait anxiety may be needed

The evidence for a relationship between anxiety and individual health is supported by

several empirical studies, for example, the Perceived Stress scale (PSS) designed by

Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983) measure the degree to which individual found their lives unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloading Also, there has been growing the acknowledged between stress and psychological well-being The perceived Stress scale can be used for stress factor in behavioral disorder However, the number of items is limited

Furthermore, there is the Students-life Stress Inventory by Gadzella, 1991; the

logical issue is following Morris’s model (1990) which consisted of 51 items of stress This instrument has nine categories of stressors (frustrations, conflicts, pressures, changes, and self-imposed) and four reactions to the stressors (physiological, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive appraisal) Other studies have been conducted with the Student-life Stress Inventory (Gadzella, 1994; Gadzella & Baloglu, 2001; Gadzella & Masten, 2004) showing student differences in reactions to evolutional situations of stress Participants were 336 undergraduates with scale as mild, moderate and severe However, some limitation with SSI that the three rating value in the category might be so easy for students to choose and understand stressful situations and easier for researchers to

interpret the data Again, suggestions that need to revise

Twenty nine years ago, College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) was developed by David and Fraser, (1986) Administration of the CUCEI to

372 students in 34 classes and to 20 instructors The instrument evaluates students' or instructors' perceptions of the following seven psychosocial dimensions of actual or preferred classroom environment: personalization, involvement, student cohesiveness, satisfaction, task orientation, innovation, and individualization In this work, David and Fraser stated that environment assumption is the potential for growth negative life experiences

Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) was developed by

Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, (1988), samples included 275 (136 female and 139 male) university students, selection of 12 items, 5 points Liker Scale There were three dimensions scale: family, friends and significant other The results showed that high levels of perceived social support were associated with low levels of depression and

anxiety symptomatology However, this short form is easy to use with 12 items

Based on Perceived Stress Scale, the Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experiences was developed by Kohn, Lafreniere and Gurevich (1990), 100 undergraduate

students, scale included 49 items, to which respondents rate their extent of experience with hassles over the past month, using the following 4-point scale: 1 = not at all part of my life,

2 = only slightly part of my life, 3 = distinctly part of my life, or 4 = very much part of my life However, application of a measurement tool that is adapted to one culture may cause difficulties when working with students of other cultures (Alzaeem, Sulaiman, & Wasif Gillani, 2010)

The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 was developed by Lovibond & Lovibond,

(1996) revised by Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns, & Swinson, (1998) is composed of three subscales: depression, anxiety, and stress Twenty-one items are rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 0 = strongly disagree to 3 = strongly agree

To summarize, these different stress scales have covered various domains Those domains are: anxiety (Sarason, 1978), frustrations, conflicts, pressures, changes, and self-imposed, physiological, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive appraisal (Gadzella, 1994; Gadzella & Baloglu, 2001; Gadzella & Masten, 2004), perceived stress (Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, classroom environment inventory (David & Fraser, 1986), perceived social support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) and students' recent life experiences (Kohn, Lafreniere and Gurevich, 1990) In addition to this, participants of the studies covered students from school level to university students as well as non- students Behavioral domain in fact has become one important domain that has strong relationship with stress in Gadzella study (1991) While classroom environment has been part of David

and Fraser in (1986), Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet and Farley (1988) extended their study into family domain in developing their MSPSS scale

Our findings provide an empirical scale for development stress scale Recent literature reviews have noted several developed stress scale Although these scales have provided a base for practice and theory generation, their validity has several perspectives The test anxiety scale is limited In fact, if we look on students’ life in relation to their study, there should be other domains that have direct correlation between causes and effects of stress Those domains, such as teaching and learning process (academic), teaching approach of lecturer and students financial situation during their study life Therefore, besides standing on two previous domains behavior and family, this study is going to extend into 4 more domains They are: academic, environment, and financial issues of students It is expected that the study would bring a newer perspective of how these five domains present play an important role in affecting stress of students This will finally get out with new stress scale particularly for university students in Vietnam As described earlier, the relationship between student experiences stressful events and the psychological reflect on individuals However, this research differs from the previous research on undergraduate student stress in several ways First, this research is an appropriate large sample size involved four university students, nice departments, social sciences and sciences major as participants Second, many of these scales consist only a single domain, such single domain item scales have only for single problem existing Moreover, this research has a multidimensional item-scales to measure stress life as a process and extends previous research about five categories in item response theory model and structure equation model were used

2.5 Research questions

In this study, there are five specific research questions which will test the following:

1 What is a significant reliability and valid measure for Vietnam undergraduate stress scale?

2 Are there six dimensions academic, family, financial, environment, behavior and psychology reflected in stress dimension?

3 Are there stress dimension measure by academic, family, financial, environment, behavior, and psychology dimensions?

4 Are there stress dimension negative influences behaviors and psychology?

5 How can these characteristics be used as design criteria for development Vietnam undergraduate stress scale?

This research is expected high and significant correlation between constructs In order to respond to these questions, structural equation model analysis represents an attractive solution because it provides to estimate pattern of association relationship among several latent constructs

In summary The chapter presents the theoretical, empirical background, and research questions

with special attention giving to behavior, academic, financial, family, environment, and psychological Therefore, the large theoretical and empirical background issues are probably good practical points of view for development of Vietnam undergraduate stress scale procedure

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

The research design will be explained in this section The development of Vietnam undergraduate stress scale framework holds within and among subdomains: academic, family, environment, financial, behavior, and psychology This study approach is to use a Classical test theory (CTT), Item response theory (IRT), and Structural equation modelling (SEM) procedure We also show how these models might be used within CTT scores, IRT scores

statistics

The sample of this study is comprised of 1,750 undergraduate students who participated voluntarily, distributed to 495 male (33.8%) and 1,255 female (66.2%), gender is dichotomous, and was draw from freshmen 537 (30.7%), sophomores 618 (35.3%), Juniors 458 (26.2%), seniors 137 (7.8%), undergraduate from sciences 705 (40.3%) and social sciences 1,045 (59.7%) Regarding to their parental status of living together 1,535 (87.7%), loss of a parent (mother or father) 113 (6.5%), step mother/father

11 (.8%) and divorced parents 94 (5.4%) The age for the sample as a whole 1,230 (70.3%; 20-25 years old) The age group has major depression includes individuals between the age of 15-24 years (Blazer et al., 1994)

The participants were taken from four universities in Ho Chi Minh City, the south

of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh is the largest city, economic center and the most universities in Vietnam When students from different provinces in Vietnam have passed the national