Stress among Out-of-School Activity Participants in South India

Regardless of the beneficial effects gained by students who participate in ‘Out-of-school’ activities, it is necessary to find out if it causes any detrimental effect on them due to over scheduling. The activity patterns of 1820 young south-Indian adolescents between the age group of 12 to 14 years were studied to investigate the relationship between participation in out-of-school activities and stress. The tool ‘Activity stress indicator’ was modified exclusively based on the “The over- scheduled child” tool developed by Rosenfeld and Wise. The study was conducted in Chennai during the period of January 2011 to April 2011. The collected data was analyzed using appropriate statistical tests with SPSS version 16.Results indicated that majority of the female adolescents have higher activity related stress than the male adolescents (p=0.018). Further, children who participated in competitions out-of-school had greater stress compared to the non-participants (p=0.017). The key finding of the study illustrates that activity stress was significantly higher among over-scheduled participants than those who had moderate to minimal activity levels (p=0.021). Thus, appropriate interventions must be planned in order to reduce the stress levels caused by over scheduling of out-of-school activities among young adolescents.