STO.

DOMINGO NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

STRESS AND SLEEP DEPRIVATION: AN

INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS
ON THE STUDENTS

ABRAHAM KASHMIER L. ALI

GRADE 12 - STEM

MADAM SHERYL BALIWAS

INTRODUCTION:

Stress and sleep are linked together in that stress can damage our sleeping quality, and a lack of
sleep leads our stress levels to rise. Both can have long-term consequences for our physical and
mental health. Sleep is one of the most important needs of all living things. Even though we may
believe that sleep merely rests our exhausted bodies, our brain is still busy all night. Sleep is
essential for both mental and physical wellbeing. When we sleep, our mind and body are
refreshed allowing us to wake up alert and rejuvenated. A night of good sleep can prevent an
increase in our stress levels and it also helps in maintaining a healthy life, without good sleep our
brain cannot concentrate properly.

Stress is the feeling of being overwhelmed or unable to cope with mental or emotional pressure.
Headaches, dizziness, aches and pains, and weariness or lack of sleep are all symptoms of stress
in our bodies. Stress is becoming a daily part of the lives of students because of their school
work and the deadlines that they need to catch up and poor time management. It can affect our
brain’s ability to think and concentrate as we tend to be easily distracted when we're stressed.
Stress can take a toll on the student’s bodies and affect both their mental and physical health, and
it can affect students as not treating stress can cause serious illness.

This study is necessary for it aims to know the effects and causes of sleep deprivation and stress
among students and how they cope with it, and how we could manage our stress and sleep
deprivation. As we are still in the pandemic period in which face-to-face classes are forbidden
and only modular and online classes are available, the purpose of this study is to become a
possible guide for schools that has modular classes. With this study, we can properly plan how
we will schedule the distribution of modules to the students during this pandemic period.
Through the use of Google Forms as a survey tool, we performed a survey to formulate the
causes of stress and sleep deprivation among students ranging from Grade 11 and 12. We
devised this study to determine the cause and effects of stress and sleep deprivation on the
student's health.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

This research study aims to know the causes of stress and lack of sleep in students and devise a
solution to the problem to lessen or remove students' stress and lack of sleep.

Specifically, it aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the primary causes of stress and lack of sleep among students?
2. What is the coping mechanism of students when they have stress and sleep
deprivation?
3. The significant effects of stress and lack of sleep on the students?

SCOPE AND DELIMITATIONS:

The focus of this study is to know the causes and possible effects of stress and sleep deprivation.
We chose the Grade 11 and 12 students in this study because they have much harder worksheets
to do and more responsibilities in both school and home during this pandemic period. As we are
in the pandemic period, the study is only focused on Sto. Domingo National High School as it is
the nearest and most convenient school that is near the researcher.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

● OTHER RESEARCHERS- This study can be a guide to those students/researchers

conducting their research or thesis.
● FUTURE RESEARCHERS- This study will serve as a useful guide for future
researchers who will cover a relative course of study in the future.
● TEACHERS- This study will serve as a possible guide for the teachers when creating the
schedule of modular distribution.
METHODOLOGY:

In this research study, we aim to know the causes of stress and lack of sleep in students and
devise a solution to the problem to lessen or remove students' stress and lack of sleep. The type
of research that we are conducting is Qualitative type research. We chose this type of research
because we believe that it is the most appropriate approach to the study that we are conducting,
in which we needed to collect data through the use of a survey. As we are still in the pandemic
period, we conducted the survey online through the use of Google Forms as it is convenient and
most students own a cellphone and data connection or wifi. We decided that using Google forms
is the right way to conduct this type of research during this pandemic period as it also helps in
minimizing contact and maximizing the safety of the respondee of the survey rather than the
traditional one of using paper to distribute to the respondee. As the research target both Grade 11
and 12, we get the help of a teacher to pass the link to the Google form that contains the survey
that we are conducting.

The part where we encounter a problem is when we distribute the links to the group chats of
Grade 11 and 12 students but we barely have any response. To solve this problem, we get the
help of a teacher to help us share the link to the Google Form where the survey is. We found out
that students will likely open a link if the one sending is a teacher rather than being a fellow
student. After that, we were able to collect the responses of the respondee in a smoother way and
we were able to save time.

The survey form that we created consisted of multiple choice, linear scale, and short paragraph
answers. This is a sample of the survey:
We chose Google form as a tool for collecting data for our study because it automatically saves
the response of the students and summarizes them by a question, and it automatically put the
responses in a pie chart or graph if needed. The only problem with using Google Form in
conducting a survey is that some students don’t take it seriously and their answers have no
meaning whatsoever, but I recommend the use of Google Forms as it s convenient in a way that
it saves the responses of the students, you could edit or add some question if you want to, and it’s
portable in a way that we will not carry anything other than our phones, and it is also a saves
time as it automatically summarizes all the responses of the students.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

RESULTS

The purpose oF why we created this study is to know the causes and effects of Stress and Sleep
Deprivation on the students. In this study, we were able to get 55 respondees to give the answers
to the survey that we created using Google Forms. This study is limited to only Grade 11 and 12
students of Sto. Domingo National High School. With the help of Google Forms, we were able
to save time as it automatically summarizes the answers of the respondees, Here this graph
shows the average age of the responders:

This graph shows the average age of the responders is 17 yrs old.
This pie chart shows us that the main cause for them to be sleep deprived is because they are
doing their modules with 41.8%, next is because they are reading books or stories on their
phones with apps like Wattpad, Novelfull, etc… stands in 27.3%, while playing games in their
phones has a percentage of 23.6%, and lastly studying with only 7.3%.

This pie chart shows that many 56.4% of the responders which is students drink coffee when
they are sleep deprived. Only 34.5% of the responders do not drink coffee and the rest 9.1% are
unsure.
This Pie chart shows that 50.9% of responders are stressed when they are sleep deprive and only
16.4& shows that they do not feel stressed with the rest of 32.7% are unsure.

In this graph shows how frequently they are sleep deprived as 1=Never, 2,=Rarely,
3=Sometimes, 4=Often, 5=Very Often. This shows that most responders chose the number 3 as
they are sleep deprived sometnimes.
In this graph shows how frequently they are stressed as 1=Never, 2,=Rarely, 3=Sometimes,
4=Often, 5=Very Often. This graph shows that most responders are stressed sometimes.

On the question “How do you cope up with sleep deprivation?”, most responders responded with
sleeping early and exercising so they can tire their body and sleep early, some of them responded
with drinking milk as it helps in sleeping, and some of them use audio books or music so that
they can fall asleep easel, and others watch tv series to tire themselve out.

We also ask them the question in our survey “What do you feel when you are stressed?”, Most of
them responded with they are feeling irritated and moody, some of them feel agitated and
suffering from headaches, overburdened, frustrated, and some of them has trouble sleeping. And
others get angry easily and for no reason at all.

Most of the responses we got from the question “How do you cope up with stress?” has a
similarity in that it shows that they must have time for themselves and enjoy, Some responded
with visiting their grandparents as it helps in calming them down.
DISCUSSION:

The results show the primary causes of the stress and lack of sleep among students is that they
are doing the modular task that they have been given by the school. Playing games in mobile
phones is also one of the main causes of sleep deprivation as games in mobile phones are highly
competitive and addictive and students chose to reduce their sleeping time for the games. One of
the reasons why some students like to play at night is the strong wifi or data connection that
reduces the lag they experience when playing, it also helps that during at night all the children
who play the games are all asleep and that reduces their chances of losing.

Exercising, resting, enjoying your free time are one of the responses of the responders in what
are their coping mechanisms against stress and sleep deprivation, Most coping mechanism we
discovered in our results has a similarity that they want to have time for themselves to enjoy and
relax their mind. Some Responders answered that they visited their grandparents home to calm
them down as having to see your whole family really helping calming a person down.

Most of the effects of both stress and sleep deprivation is that the responders feels irritated and
they are suffering from a headache. Thye tends to feel frustrated and they get easily angry at
anything. Responders also responded that they get distracted too easily and it is hard to focus.
Not being able to focus is caused by having a lack of sleep as our brain could not relax ad rest
properly. Watching TV series or K-Drama also helps in alleviating their stress as they are
watching what they like and enjoy it.

What we did not expect is that almost half of the responders drink coffee when they are sleep-
deprived. With the help of a teacher in distributing the survey, we discovered that students tend
to answer the survey given by a teacher rather than a fellow student.

In conclusion, stress and sleep deprivation can be possibly avoided if we have good time
management for ourselves. The more stress we feel, the harder it is to sleep as we tend to
overthink because of stress. The more we lack sleep, our stress will increased as our mind was
not able to rest and relax properly
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