Stress Symptoms Versus Health among Sports and Non-Sports Students

Every mindvidual whether teacher or student- whether sportingly active or academically active, has something m common i.e., they all perform their tasks at varying degrees of stress levels. Stress can be defined as a physical, mental or emotional demand, which tends to disturb the homeostasis of the body which directly influences health of an individual. Health may be defined negatively as the absence of illess, functionally as the ability to cope with every day activities, or positively as fitness and well being. Many researchers have demonstrated the impact of stress on health- at an optimum level of stress one reaps the benefits of alertness and activation that improves performance of a sports student but when stress crosses its optimal level it ultimately, negatively influences the health of both sports as well as non sports students. The present study comprised of 100 sports students and 100 non sports students selected randomly from Aligarh Muslim University. To measure stress symptoms, stress symptoms inventory developed by Dr.AK.Srivastav(1983)was used. lt has 39 items categonzed into 3 different dimensions: physical, psychological and social relational symptoms with 4 response categories ranging from never, sometimes, quite often to almost constantly. For the measurement of health, general health questionnaire (GHQ- 28) designed by Goldberg and Hillier (1979) was used, it has 28 items categorized into 4 different dimensions: Somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression with 4 response categories ranging from not at all, no more than usual, rather more than usual to much more than usual. Keeping m view the comparison between sports and non sports students on stress symptoms inventory and on general health questionnaire, the obtained data were statistically analyzed by means o f f test. Further multiple regression analysis using step wise method was applied which shows that stress symptoms predict the poor health among sports and non-sports student. ft was evident from Table 'A' that sports and non sports students differ significantly from each other on stress symptoms inventory The higher mean score of non sports students showed that they have more stress symptoms. Table 'B' showed sports students significantly differ from non sports students on general health questionnaire, significant value off indicate that both have different levels of health. The higher mean score of sports students showed that they have good health. Table 'C and 'D' showed that stress symptoms predict health among sports and non sports students respectively. It is clear from the table that all 3 difi-erent dimensions of stress symptoms emerged as siginficantly positive predictors of health among the sports students and significantly negative predictors of health among non sports students. Results of the present study revealed that there were significantly meaningful differences among sports and non sports students, ft means those students who have more stress symptoms they have worst health and those students who have less stress symptoms they have good health. Acertam level of stress IS needed for optimal performance. But as stress level increases from optimal level it impairs the health of an individual which negatively influences the performance of students.