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Dina’s research was on how and if anxiety levels in college students were effected by loans, relationship factors, and nationality. Beginning in Professor McGee’s Epidemiology course (PH-211 for those interested), Dina began her study by looking at national studies done by the CDC in the The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and resluts from the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The results were gathered for women and men, but Dina chose to focus on the statistics for the female population. These studies showed that 48% of college women had stress and anxiety specifically related to something academic, and in a sense “Acedemic Trauma.” Women overwhelmingly also suffered from a significantly larger amount of stress than men. Dina found these numbers to be of great interest since over 40 million Americans suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder, and our government is spending a great deal of time and money dealing with its consequences.
Being a great Agnes Scott scholar, Dina wanted to investigate what might be going on with Agnes Scott’s studnets. She created a peer survey on Survey Monkey, and without much solicitation, Dina had usable data from 173 students. She asked:
– What is your level of dependancy (financial, ect.)?
-What is your relationship status (married, divorced, widowed, single)?
-Do you have any student loans?
-How is your GPA?
-What is your birthplace?
– Do you participate in Work Study or have another type of job?
Results showed that from the small sample of Agnes Scott students, the average age was 21.4, 10% were non-US born, most were not married, and 18.5% had severe anxiety. Other data implicated that student loans and relationship status did contribute to increased stress levels. Since Agnes students are notroius for requiring a high level of acedemic excellence and are typically involved in many activities on or off campus, Dina stressed the importance of continuing this research.
*Later, Dina’s data will be added to this post.
Lora-Beth