Paper Example on College Students: Unequal Impact of Issues

Introduction

There are many issues affecting college students. However, these issues affect students disproportionately. For example, there is a gendered assumption that issues such as relationships difficulties affect more women than men and that depression and anxiety affect the minority groups more than the majority groups and might also affect the low SES groups than the middle and high SES groups (Slopen & Williams, 2014). There is also an assumption that alcohol and drugs use affect the students disproportionately along the ethnic lines as there are an argument that the minority groups especially the African American children are likely to indulge in drug abuse more than other groups (Shukla & Pandey, 2019). While this may be true, the assumptions are not objective as there has never been an objective researcher founded on rigorous quantitative data analysis. To find out if the assumptions are true, the researcher conducted this study.

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Research Aim

The aims of the research are to determine how four issues including relationships, depression, alcohol, and sleep difficulties affect students.

Research Objectives

The following are the objective of the study.

• Determine the relationship between relationship difficulties and depression among students
• Determine the relationship between depression, and alcohol abuse affect students
• Give recommendations on how students can overcome these problems
• Gave recommendations to the school on how these issues can be reduced among the students.

Research Hypothesis

In this study, the researcher hypothesized that:

Hypothesis 1

H0: There is a significant correlation between relationships difficulties among students and alcohols and drug use among the students

H1: There is no relationship among the relationship difficulties among students and drugs and alcohol use

Hypothesis 2

H0: Depression anxiety and drugs abuse cause sleep difficulties

H1: Depression and anxiety and drug abuse does not cause sleep difficulties

Research Methodology

Research Design and Approach

The researcher adopted the descriptive research design to achieve the research objectives. The descriptive research design involves the description of the population or phenomenon as it is without manipulating any variables. The goal is to describe fully the issues and how they affect students. The researcher will, therefore, describe the means, averages or frequencies of how the variables affect students and the relationships among the variables.

Data and Data CollectionThe researcher collected data from a random sample of 150 students at the universities and colleges across the state of Georgia that was published and available at the ACHA-NCHA websites was comprised of outdated data.

Data AnalysisThe researcher conducted a mix of inferential statistics and descriptive statistics. The researcher conducted measures of central tendencies and measures of dispersion. The researcher also conducted a multivariate data analysis such as regression analysis to determine the relationship among two or more variables. Other multivariate analysis methods include correlations analysis, and multivariate regression analysis.

Research Findings

Demographics of the respondents

To determine how social issues, affect students. The researcher conducted a study using the student as the respondents. The description of the respondents was as below.

The age of the respondents was between 18 years (minimum) and highest age (maximum) 67 years. The average age (mean age) of the students was 22.75 years. Most of the students tied (mode) age 20 years.

• Mean 22.75
• Standard Error 0.486547
• Median 21
• Mode 20
• Standard Deviation 5.958962
• Sample Variance 35.50923
• Kurtosis 20.19047
• Skewness 3.529269
• Range 49
• Minimum 18
• Maximum 67
• Sum 3412.5
• Count 150
• Confidence Level (95.0%) 0.961424

The gender was disproportionately distributed as most of the students 66% were female and 34% were male students while none registered themselves as non-binary.

Additionally, the ethnicities of the students were also varied as below: The whites accounted for 60% is whites, blacks is 5%, 14% is Hispanic, 11% is Asians, and other races account for 10%

Drug use

Over the last 30 days the number of times that respondents had used drugs varied. For example, they had used marijuana 120 times, and used cocaine 13 times. They had also used meth 17 times and used amphetamines 7 times. Additionally, hallucinogen had been used by the respondents 30 times and steroids had been used by the respondents 17 times. However, the respondents had used opiates 12 times and other illegal drugs 267 times

Correlation among variables

The researcher also conducted a multivariate regression and correlations analysis to determine if there were the relationship among the variables. There were no significant correlations between alcohol abuse and problems in relationships. The researcher found out that the problem in the relationship was not a major predictor of drugs and alcohol abuse (Bennett, 2014). The researcher also found out that alcohol and drugs abuse do not lead to problems in relationships that end in violence among intimate partners. This shows that depression is not a good predictor of difficulties in relationships as most of the points in difficulties in relationships are not accounted for by depression. The mean number of times the respondents had received information about relationship difficulties was 1.39 (SD=0.490, N=145). On the other hand, the mean number of times the respondents had experienced depression was 0.06 times (SD=0.06, N=145). The number of times the respondents had experienced anxiety was 0.02 times (SD=0.143, N=145)

Descriptive Statistics

Received Info:

There was no relationship between received information on relationship difficulties and depression r=0.027, and negative relationship difficulties and anxiety r=-0.018.

Discussion

The researcher found that there are a lot of issues affecting student's life in college. Most of the people who experience depression and anxiety attribute their status to difficulties in relationships and this has also contributed to the rise in the number of single-parent students or students in dysfunctional relationships. Alcohol and drug abuse are manifestations of deep-seated emotional problems that should be dealt with appropriately in a timely manner. Never the less, depression and anxiety lead to lack of sleep as students are worried about a social problem or personal problems affecting them directly or indirectly.

Conclusion

Drug use, problems in prelateships, depression and sleep difficulties are not significantly correlated despite the differences in the strength of the relationship. These are social issues affecting students worldwide. However, from the social psychology perspective, all these problems are manageable and can be eliminated among the students. It is the duty of the schools to ensure that the student leads a healthy life by putting in place, measures to help students refrain from things that might lead to depression and anxiety, alcohol and drugs abuse, lack of sleep or difficulties in relationships.

Recommendations to the students and the school's administration

1. Students should be taught how to balance social life and studies. This should be a mandatory monthly education program

2. The schools should hire guidance and counseling professional to help the students whenever they are under pressure

3. The school administration should develop a rapport with the students as this is the only way the student can be free to talk about personal issues affecting them and trusting the administration for support.

4. The schools should initiate mandatory monthly drugs abuse and relationship workshops and seminars to sensitize the students against drug abuse. This way, students will be in apposition to make informed decisions in relations to drug use.

5. Finally, the school should select and train few students who will work as peer counselors to the students because there are times when the students are overwhelmed and guidance and counseling staff are not within the vicinity of the school.

References

Bennett, T. (2014). Differences in the age-drug use curve among students and non-students in the UK. Drug And Alcohol Review, 33(3), 280-286. doi: 10.1111/dar.12100

Ginn, S. (2004). Relationships among Alcohol Consumption, Drug Use, and Goal Orientation among College Students in the Southeastern USA. Psychological Reports, 94(2), 411-421. doi: 10.2466/pr0.94.2.411-421

Slopen, N., & Williams, D. (2014). Discrimination, Other Psychosocial Stressors, and Self-Reported Sleep Duration and Difficulties. Sleep, 37(1), 147-156. doi: 10.5665/sleep.3326