Professor Dr.Hab. V.D. Povzun
Associate Professor, PhD A.A. Povzun
Associate Professor, PhD V.V. Apokin
Postgraduate N.R. Usaeva
Surgut State University, Surgut

Keywords: stress tolerance, stress, academic educational process.

Introduction. Starting their student life, young people find themselves in virtually endless stressful situations and therefore experience stress and psychological tension most often. In most cases, student stress develops against the background of a large information flow, adaptation to new social conditions as well as an approaching end of the term or exams; moreover, financial and accommodation issues, taking care of their own food and the difficulty of processing large amounts of information are also permanent companions of student's life [1, 2, 13].

Stress experienced by students primarily affects their progress in studies and creative activities [7, 9], which in its turn also creates discomfort resulting in increased overall stress and failure [11]. This leads not only to deterioration in performance, but also to increased morbidity, decreased adaptive capabilities, changes in value-conscious and even sex-role personal identity [6, 10]. Therefore students’ stress tolerance analysis is important not only for development of performance improvement methods, but also for health improvement [3, 8].

This issue is of particular importance in relation to students of sport departments, whose total study time taking into account the ever-increasing load of the training process is 9-12 hours per day compared to 7-8 hours per day for the students of other majors [4]. Demanding requirements for physiological and psychological capabilities of student-athletes dictate the need for constant monitoring of their condition. Primarily this applies to young student-athletes who are in a continuous process of training and competition and experience an increased physical and psycho-emotional loads while at the university [1, 5].

Stress tolerance is a measure of the body’s ability to resist the factors causing a psycho-emotional shift and in case of long-term exposure leading to violations of the vegetative state – psychosomatic disorders. Students are influenced by such factors almost constantly, so in order to organize the work on correction of their psychosomatic condition its objective and timely assessment is required first of all. 

Objective of the study was to assess stress tolerance of the sport department students of Surgut State University.  

Methods and structure of the study. Surveyed were 108 students of the sport department of the 2^nd and 4^th (graduating) year of Surgut State University of both sexes, engaged in various sports and having different skill levels. The Y.V. Shcherbatykh’s stress tolerance test [13] was chosen for the study, which allows not only to directly assess the level of stress tolerance, but also obtain interpretations of certain scales determining personality, psychological and psychosomatic components of stress tolerance [12]. During the testing the students were asked to rate on a scale of ten their attitude to certain events (from 1 – “leaves me absolutely indifferent” to 10 – “worries and stresses me out very much”), as well as assess changes in their own stress level with time. In fact, this questionnaire assesses the level of stress susceptibility – an indicator that is opposite to stress tolerance, therefore, the higher the values in the test, the lower the stress tolerance of a person.  Average test results are as follows: less than 35 points – high stress tolerance, 35-85 points – normal stress tolerance, more than 85 points – low.

In addition, as we have already mentioned, there are interpretations provided for individual scales based on the test results: the first scale determines hyper reaction to circumstances that are beyond our control (average values being from 15 to 30 points); the second scale shows a tendency to complicate everything too much, which can lead to stress (average values being from 14 to 25 points); the third scale shows a predisposition to psychosomatic illnesses (average values being from 12 to 28 points); the fourth scale determines destructive ways of coping with stress (average values being from 10 to 22 points); the fifth – constructive ways of overcoming stress (from 23 to 35 points). 

Research results and discussion. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. University sport department students’ stress tolerance, 2^nd and 4^th years

The number of students who believed that the stress load had not improved or at least had not worsened over the past three years was 35% of the 2^nd year students and 30% of the 4^th year ones.  

Thus, stress tolerance level of the sport department students remains virtually unchanged throughout their studies. Therefore, neither the learning environment nor sports activities are significant factors impacting this psychophysiological indicator – at least in the university environment. It should be specially noted that, unfortunately, there remains quite a high percentage of graduates with the low level of stress tolerance, which, in our opinion, is not quite consistent with the professional qualities of an athlete or a trainer.   

In addition, as we have already mentioned, there are interpretations provided for individual scales based on the test results (Table 2).

Table 2. Stress tolerance characteristics by scales determining its personality, psychological and psychosomatic components 

Stress tolerance components analysis suggests than the final result of the test is quite satisfactory. Total statistical number of points indicates good stress tolerance, and although overall stress susceptibility slightly increases during the study period, it still remains in the normal range.  This is mainly due to the number of students who believe their stress load has increased in the last three years, and this increase is quite considerable, especially for females. As for males, this value is consistently low. 

Characteristics by individual scales reveal some key points that affect the final result. Although the overall stress tolerance is of no concern, these points should be acknowledged for them not to become problematic. As in the case of the final assessment, it should be noted that the factors that determine stress tolerance are not critical. This is guaranteed not only by the absence of high values on the scale of self-assessed predisposition to psychosomatic illnesses (the 3^rd scale), but also by the decrease of this value. Of course, this is not a medical report, and there are people leading a physically active, healthy lifestyle among the subjects which, apparently, accounts for this result. In any case, the total score tells us there is no reason to be concerned with possible psychosomatic consequences of stress. In addition, it should be borne in mind that this group experiences regular and intensive physical and psychological loads of sport nature, which cannot but affect their overall well-being.  

Nevertheless, it should be noted that, according to the totals of individual scales, students for the most part still tend to make everything too complicated; moreover, they complicate the circumstances over which they have no direct control and which they cannot change in any aspect (weather, politics, prices, educators, etc). That is, the reasons for failure, if there are any, are subjective and a student himself is almost never to blame for them; this picture does not change at all throughout the learning process, since the percentage of students sharing such beliefs is stable but tends to increase (the 1^st and 2^nd scales). It is reassuring that commitment to constructive ways of overcoming stress remains as high as possible, although readiness for destructive actions is by no means zero (the 4^th and 5^th scales). Apparently, believing themselves most often to be victims of the circumstances, while the world is unfair to them, athletes tend to employ destructive ways of coping with stress. 

Conclusions. This test may well be used to assess students’ stress tolerance, since it is handy, timely, informative and easy to use as well as to process. It does not only provide a general assessment of the condition, but also makes it possible to see the reasons for decreasing stress tolerance, individually for each survey participant.  

The average level of sport department students’ stress tolerance is quite satisfactory and remains virtually unchanged throughout their studies. The latter, in our opinion, demonstrates the need for a comprehensive research of the effect of students’ stress tolerance level on improvement of their attitude towards learning activities; development of a psychological and educational technology forming positive attitude of students to the learning process by improving their stress tolerance is also required.    

Scales of stress tolerance components enable us to detect a marked subjectivity of students in their approach to assessing their own resilience to various stress factors which should be taken into account by all the actors of the academic educational process both during its organization and when summing up the results. Special attention should be paid to students, especially graduates, who have a low level of stress tolerance.  

References

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Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru

Abstract
The study was designed to rate, based on the Y.V. Shcherbatykh’s stress tolerance test data, the university sport department students’ stress tolerance and make interpretations of its key personality, mental and psychosomatic components with their variation in different stages of the academic education period. The study found some subjectivism in the students’ self-rating of the tolerance to a variety of stress factors coming up in the education process. The study emphasized the need in an integrated study of the students’ stress tolerance rates versus their attitudes to and progress in the academic education process; and the need for new approaches to encourage the positive attitudes of students to the academic education activity by, among other things, stress tolerance improvement initiatives.