Postgraduate N.R. Usaeva¹
PhD, Associate Professor A.A. Povzun¹
Dr.Hab., Professor V.D. Povzun¹
PhD, Associate Professor V.V. Apokin^1
1Surgut State University, Surgut

Keywords: stress tolerance, stress, education process.

Background. Sport spirit implies a drive for ascendance, high competitive accomplishment and leadership. The growing competitiveness and the physical and mental stresses of the modern sports require an increasing attention being given in the modern sport science to a variety of factors of influence of and mechanisms contributing to competitive successes; with a special emphasis on the psychological aspects thereof [2]. This is the reason for the individual stress tolerance being ranked among the most important qualities in the sport mastery developing training and competitive processes, with every athlete having to cope with daily stresses as a result of extreme physical and mental challenges [4].

In addition to the sport-specific stresses, student-athletes have to cope with the education process related ones that are particularly and naturally acute in the examination session periods when their impacts on the individual performance and adaptive capability may be very high [6, 8, 13]. These stresses, unless duly countered, may be of negative effect on the individual progress in the academic, creative and sporting domains [9, 10] and may increasingly undermine the individual competitive accomplishments [11]. The permanent and unavoidable academic stressors require special mechanisms being developed and mobilised to keep due mental and physiological balance [7]. That means that in the academic athletic training systems a higher priority needs to be given to the relevant professional training process components on the whole and the mental health protection, mental conditioning and balancing tools in particular, the tools being duly customised to the professional activity [3]. A special attention in this context is to be given to beginner student-athletes who face stresses of uninterrupted training, competitive and education processes and, hence, are exposed to extreme physical, mental and emotional stresses in the first academic years [1, 5].

When we once attempted to rate the overall stress tolerance of student-athletes, we found [12] that it tends to vary within a wide range albeit never may be rated ideal and, moreover, never shows notable progress for the university period. Even this fact alone gives grounds to assume that it is the academic process that exposes the athletes to a variety of stressors due to the emotional overloads contributing to the generally increased anxiety of student-athletes [2]. Knowing that this exposure is unavoidable and permanent, the relevant psychosomatic conditioning and balancing services will be designed and provided on a permanent basis and individualised using a variety of objective and timely rating tests.

Objective of the study was to rate stress tolerance of the Surgut State University athletes in the academic process.

Methods and structure of the study. Subject to the questionnaire survey under the study were the second- and fourth-year (graduate) students (n = 100, of both sexes) of Surgut State University engaged in different sports and having different sport qualifications. Their stress tolerance was rated by the Sherbatykh's [15] stress sensitivity tests designed to both directly rate the overall stress tolerance and probe and interpret a variety of its components on a few scales metering contributions of the specific stressors, the personality/ mentality aspects and psychosomatic constituents of the individual stress tolerance [14]. In the tests a ten-point scale is used to rate the subject’s attitudes to different impacts/ events with the responses ranking from 1 (no impact at all) to 10 (highly disturbing impact) and classified into the following two categories: stressor contribution to total stress; and academic process related stressors; with the students offered to self-rate own stresses and their variations on the scale.

The first category included the following stressors/ problems: 1.1 too strict educators; 1.2 high academic loads; 1.3 shortage of teaching aids; 1.4 obscure/ boring textbooks; 1.5 separation from the family; 1.6 too limited and/or mismanaged finance;  1.7 mismanaged/ disordered lifestyle; 1.8 irregular nutrition; 1.9 interpersonal problems with the roommates; 1.10 group conflicts; 1.11 over-responsible attitude to the academic education; 1.12 unwillingness to learn and/or disappointment in the vocational identification; 1.13 shyness, timidity; 1.14 fear of future; and 1.15 private-life-related problems.

The second category included the following stressors/ problems: 3.1 feel of helplessness, inability to cope with the problems; 3.2 inability to cope with obsessive thoughts; 3.3 high distraction, poor attention concentration ability; 3.4 irritability, touchiness; 3.5 bad mood, depression; 3.6 fear, anxiety; 3.7 lack of confidence, low self-rating; 3.8 habitual haste due to time pressure; 3.9 sleeping disorders; 3.10 poor interpersonal relations, communication problems; 3.11 pains in heart, palpitation; 3.12 respiration system disorders; 3.13 gastrointestinal system disorders; 3.14 muscular strain and/or tremor; 3.15 headaches; and 3.16 low working capacity, increased fatigability.

It should be noted that the above tests are designed to rate stress sensitivity that is opposite to stress tolerance, i.e. the higher is some test rate the lower is the individual stress tolerance in this aspect. Given in Table 1 hereunder are the average test rates that were used as a basis for the analyses and interpretations under the study:

Table 1.

Study results and discussion. Current stress sensitivity rates and their variations were self-rated fairly low by the subjects, the rates varying insignificantly over the academic period, with the share of the students feeling that the stressors grow with time varying around 30% in each of the academic courses surveyed. It should be noted that the examination sessions (naturally associated with high stresses) were not rated high among stressors by the students in fact albeit the relevant stress rates were slightly above the statistical average. It gives the reasons to conclude that the academic process as such may not be ranked as the key factor of influence on the sporting students’ stress tolerance rates. It should also be mentioned that these rates were dominated by the young women’s survey data and, consequently, the surveys need to be structured on a gender-specific basis to fairly rate the academic process stressors.

It may be pertinent to mention that the low-rated overall academic process stress should not be interpreted as the lack of sensitivity to the individual conditions of the academic environment, as a student may be unprepared to the academic process self-management. Given in Table 2 hereunder are the survey data indicative of the students’ academic process self-management abilities and qualities.

Table 2. Contributions of specific stressors into the overall academic stress exposure, with the relevant stress indicators

The survey data showed that the academic stress exposure is dominated, in the students’ opinions, by the excessively high academic loads (item 1.2). The other top three stressors (items 1.6, 1.7, 1.8) related to the process management problems may be explained by the young people’s unpreparedness to the self-reliant lifestyle. However, in view of the contributions of these stressors being on the rise over the academic period, we have reasons to assume that these problems are interrelated and aggravated by the modern policy to increase the share of the students’ independent learning activity. This policy appears to be fraught with the unexpected side effects due to the growing time pressure and, as a result, the growing stress exposure. The stress sensitivity rating data provided by items 1.12 and 1.14 support the above assumption and may be viewed as the worrying symptoms. The doubts, fears and lack of confidence in future exposed by the test are natural not only for the academic environments nowadays; however, the increasing sensitivity in theses aspects in the academic community on the whole and academic sporting community in particular should be duly acknowledged and addressed.

Conclusion. The study data and analyses give the reasons to conclude that, first of all, these tests are highly beneficial for the academic stress tolerance rating studies as they are convenient, time-efficient, informative and easily processed by statistical and analytical tools. Second, the study found that the academic process as such was not ranked among the key stressors by the sampled students majoring in sports and, consequently, it should not be ranked among the key stressors of the academic sports as well. Therefore, the contribution of the academic process on the whole could be neglected in the tests and analyses, and this was the reason for us to leave non-analysed the academic process specific indicators. However, an academic progress may be hampered by expressly negative and/or sceptical attitudes of students both to the academic learning process and the professional career it is focused on. In this context, the test toolkit and analyses offered in the study may be helpful in the efforts to detect such attitudes at the early stages for the academicians to be prepared to take the relevant timely efforts to correct the situation via reasonable action plans.

References

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Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru

Abstract

Stress tolerance is viewed today as one of the key components of athletic sport mastery built up via the training process and competitive experience, and in every modern training system a high priority is given to the individual stress coping abilities mobilized by extreme physical and mental workloads. Y.V. Sherbatykh used educational stress tests to rate the individual stress tolerance and offered interpretations of the key personality, mental and psychosomatic traits of the students majoring in academic sport disciplines at different stages of the education process. The study found certain biases in the students’ stress-tolerance self-rates classified by different stressors of the academic education process. The study revealed the need for a further integrated study of the students’ stress tolerance rates versus their attitudes to and progress in education, plus the need for new training models to cultivate enthusiastic attitudes to the educational process by means of the stress tolerance building tools.