When Academic Stress Meets Anxiety: Evidence from Senior High School Academic Track Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69569/jip.2026.469Keywords:
Academic stress, Anxiety symptoms, Correlational study, Secondary education, StudentsAbstract
Academic demands may coincide with anxiety during senior high school, yet school-level evidence from provincial Philippine settings remains limited. This cross-sectional study aimed to describe academic stress and anxiety symptoms and determine whether the two were associated among Grade 11 and Grade 12 Academic Track students at a public national high school in Marinduque. Forty-three eligible students participated voluntarily and completed the 16-item Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA) and the seven-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7). The instruments showed good internal consistency in the present sample (alpha = .88 and .91, respectively). Mean academic stress was 54.86 (SD = 9.67), while mean anxiety was 10.30 (SD = 5.99). Twenty-one respondents (48.8%) obtained GAD-7 scores in the moderate-to-severe screening ranges; these categories indicate self-reported symptom severity and are not clinical diagnoses. Academic stress was positively associated with anxiety symptoms, r(41) = .67, p < .001, 95% CI [.47, .81], with a similar Spearman sensitivity estimate (rho = .69, p < .001). The findings provide a local, sample-specific indication that academic stress and anxiety symptoms covary among the participating students and may inform confidential support and further assessment. Because the study was cross-sectional, involved a small voluntary sample from one school, and used simultaneous self-report measures, it does not establish causation, clinical prevalence, or population-level estimates. Larger multisite and longitudinal studies are recommended.
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