WORK STRESS AND WELL-BEING : ACADEMIC WORK STRESS AND ITS RELATION TO THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AND SOCIAL LIFE OF UNIVERSITY MASTER STUDENTS

Abstract: The aim of this research study was to explore the relationship between academic work stress, psychological well-being and social life of university master students. It was also examined whether the presence of control variables i.e. gender and living status had an influence on the relationship between the variables mentioned above. A total of 100 participants both male (N=56) and female (N=44) were conveniently drawn from master students pursuing different master programmes in the university and the spearman’s correlation results of how academic work stress is related to psychological well-being showed a significant strong negative correlation between the variables (rs=-.448, p < .001) which suggests that students who experienced a high level academic work stress, experienced a lower level of psychological well-being. In addition, the results on the relationship between academic work stress and social life showed a significant negative correlation between variables (rs=-.293, p < .001) meaning that a high level of academic work stress is negatively correlated with a lower level of social life among students. Also, the inclusion of living status as a control variable did not have an influence on the above relationship but including gender had a positive significant impact. Lastly, theoretical implications of the study as well as the conclusion were presented.