Abstract:

Introduction:
Academic stress in higher education has demonstrated to have negative consequences on teaching-learning processes. In this regard, those students who suffer from high academic stress levels usually show lower academic performance, more psychological disturbances, or lower motivation levels, among others. Hence, it has been a significant predictor of university dropout. This issue can be aggravated by the influence of contextual factors. In this sense, the health situation caused by the COVID-19, in which several dimensions of the teaching-learning process have been affected, could have increased the academic stress of university students. This fact should be studied deeply, especially regarding gender differences, as it has been demonstrated that women are particularly vulnerable to academic stress.

Objectives:
The main aim of the present study was to analyze gender differences on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stress levels of a sample of university students from the University of Alicante (Spain).

Methodology:
The design of the study was cross-sectional. The sample was composed of 140 students (41 men and 99 women) from the University of Alicante (Spain) with a mean age of 22 years. Participants completed an online survey on June 2020 (at the end of the second semester when the state of alarm in Spain was just finished). The online survey was composed by a sociodemographic questionnaire elaborated ad-hoc and by the Academic Stressor Scale. This questionnaire is oriented to the evaluation of academic stressors in high education, and is formed by 54 items with a Likert type scale of 5 points (from “1=never” to “5=always”). A total score can be calculated. Furthermore, the scores in the following subscales could be also considered: methodological deficiencies of the teaching staff, student overload, beliefs about academic performance, public interventions, negative social climate, exams, lack of value of the contents, and difficulties of participation.

Results:
Differences based on gender were found on the following subscales: methodological deficiencies of the teaching staff [t(138)=4.195, p=.0001, d=.71], student overload [t(138)=4.219, p=.0001, d=.71], beliefs about academic performance [t(138)=3.635, p=.0001, d=.61], public interventions [t(138)=4.449, p=.0001, d=.75], negative social climate [t(138)=2.521, p=.013, d=.42], exams [t(138)=6.095, p=.0001, d=1.03], and difficulties of participation [t(138)=3.332, p=.001, d=.56]. Furthermore, differences in the total stress score were also found [t(138)=5.478, p=.0001, d=.93]. In all dimensions, women exhibited higher stress levels in comparison to men.

Conclusions:
Based on the obtained results, women seem to be more vulnerable to suffer from high academic stress levels. In this sense, although the COVID-19 situation could increase the academic stress of all students, special attention should be paid to women. Hence, practically in all dimensions, women obtained higher scores, and they feel more stressed than men. Although previous studies have indicated that women generally present higher academic stress scores, it is important to point out this issue during extraordinary contexts, such as the caused by the current health situation. As women are more vulnerable to stress, it is necessary that teaching staff know this situation and can implement educative preventive or intervention strategies to reduce stress in this population from a gender perspective.

Keywords:

COVID-19, academic stress, gender, university students.