Abstract:

Entrance to engineering colleges can be a great achievement to undergraduate students’. The autonomy of personal life connected to academic achievement, challenges a student ideologies and behavior. This psychological and psychosocial interference are important for developing systems and intervention that may prevent or reduce mental problems. However previous studies suggest undergraduate students’ are vulnerable to mental health problems across the world. Abruptive behaviors among college student are functioning from an isolated centre. Overuse of social media and low public interaction, unhealthy connection with friends and family leads to desolation. The feeling of loneliness is the first step towards formation of disorder-Depression, Anxiety and Distress. Based on the literature studies, it can be concluded that students with depression, anxiety and distress can have relationship problems, Substance abuse, guilt, tiredness, time management problems, consecutive break up and patch up which severely affect their academic output. The existing literature provides evidence of wide range of studies which shows how depression, anxiety and stress affect academic output. But there are very limited studies where depression, anxiety and distress are clustered and a new scale is formed to determine the undergraduate engineering student’s GPA.

This study tries to find the problems of our education system which provokes a student to attain his/her mental disequilibrium. The study estimates degree to which adverse psychological factors affect the student grades. Hence a scale is been developed named Student Anxiety Scale (SAS) incorporating 3 major variables/factors- Depression, Anxiety and Distress (DASD) with 27 other sub variables or factors. Through a self-reported questionnaire developed, the study depicts degree to which 30 items affect GPA with the help of factor analysis technique. Model fit is examined using Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and comparative fit index. Reliability and validity of the model was checked and results were reported in the text. The scale focuses on the student’s mental health for a period of 4 months. Further, the study conducts demographic analyses by incorporating variables gender, parental education and medium of instruction to find the underlying causes of DASD. Hence the aim of the entire work is to build up a scale which will study the effect of DASD on GPA.

Keywords:

Grade Point Average (GPA), Depression, Anxiety, Distress, Factor Analyses.