The Effect of Psychological Stress on Alienation Levels among Sultan Qaboos University Students

Abstract

The study aimed to examine the predictive effects of educational and health stress on Sultan Qaboos University's (SQU) students' feeling of alienation. In addition, the study examined the effects of demographic variables (gender, GPA) on the levels of alienation. The study sample consisted of 482 students (69.3%) females from both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at SQU. Two questionnaires were used. The first one measured the levels of alienation based on four domains: loss of belonging, non-compliance with standards, feeling of disability, and loss of meaning. The second one measured the levels of educational and health stress. The study results revealed that the rates of alienation and stress were generally low. Moreover, statistically significant differences were found in the domain of non-compliance with standards based on gender. Also, statistically significant differences were found in all alienation domains based on GPA. The results indicated that educational stress was able to predict all domains of alienation; however, health stress was able to predict the "loss of meaning" domain only. The researchers provided a number of recommendations to deal with feelings of alienation among students.