Beyond the Classroom: A Study of Health Awareness, Reproductive Knowledge and Academic Stress in Senior Secondary Schools

Abstract

The study was intended to test the level of awareness about adolescent issues and academic stress among senior secondary school girls with special concern to socio-demographic profile, health and hygiene behaviours, menstrual and reproductive knowledge, use of technology and the level of stress among girls. The design employed was exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional in nature that includes 50 adolescent girls who were chosen between the ages of 15 and 18 years in District Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, India having different socioeconomic backgrounds, school type (government and privately owned schools) and family set-ups (joint and nuclear). A self-created 40-item questionnaire was used to identify demographics, abilities, socioeconomic status, technology, health, nutrition, exercise, language and future intentions of the adolescent girls. The Academic Stress Scale (ASS) created by Kim and adapted by Rao (2012) was also used to measure the stress levels which was a five-dimensional scale of academic stress. The descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests were utilized to analyze the data. Findings indicated that there was a major gap in reproductive and menstrual knowledge and discrepancy in hygiene and nutrition practices despite some positive health behaviour. Moreover, it was found that there were significant variations in academic stress between school types. These results are important to highlight the necessity of school-based health education, stress management programmes and specific measures aimed at supporting, increasing awareness and resilience among adolescent girls.