Content area
Purpose
>To identify the financial stress and associate factors of tertiary level student.
Design/methodology/approach
>To identify the financial stress and associate factors, a structured questionnaire was developed to collect data from 571 students of different universities of Bangladesh through Google form. Chi square and Cramer's V were applied to find the associated factors with financial stress of students, whereas ordinal regression was performed to evaluate the influence of the associated factors on financial stress.
Findings
>Gender, living status, borrowing loan factors have positive association with financial stress. Tuition fee dues have significant positive association with financial stress. A student who has tuition fee dues feels 1.48 times more stress compared to student who does not have dues. Females were found less likely to be financially stressed (AOR = 1.536) than male students. Students who borrowed loans were more likely to have financial stress than non-borrowed loan groups of students.
Practical implications
>Results indicate that financial stress has a strong impact on participation in different academic and personal activities of a student. Therefore, parents, university administration and student counselor should consider the factor to assess stress of a student.
Originality/value
>This study identified factors responsible for financial stress of Bangladeshi students of tertiary level.
1. Introduction
The growing burden of loan and dues among university students is a matter of serious concern where financial self-efficacy is rare for majority students' wellness, universities are paying attention to this major issue now-a-days. The first step of analyzing this issue might be to know or identify the determinants of financial stress. It is confirmed from previous research that financial inability plays an influential role in student life. Occurrence of financial difficulty as a source of stress is often found in literature but identifying the factors that lead to stress is not well documented. Therefore, for the sake of student persistence it is time to go deeper into it. After identifying the core determinants of financial stress of a student, one must analyze the connection or associativity among these factors. These associations may lead to meaningful insights. For example, students having a pressure of dues in university cannot spontaneously participate in academic activities and in some cases are also not ready to join in various events run by the university. These things are not sharable and quite private, which makes a student feel isolated and abandoned. Sometimes this kind of situation is really awkward and it directly affects the mental health of students. Ultimately living in a negative mental condition, students cannot be attentive in study. In addition, suicide becomes one of the main public health problems in Bangladesh in recent times. The suicide case among students in Bangladesh has increased than last few years. About 45% of suicides is higher than the previous 12-month period (Sakib, 2021). One of the main reasons of suicide among students is depression which is influenced by financial stress (Davis and Mantler, 2004; Mamun et al., 2020a). Moreover, a few of them find no option but to decide to drop their study. Therefore, the consequence of financial stress could be massive and unexpected. It has a long-term effect that should be taken under proper care. There is a large number of literature to address depression and mental health, however, very few articles address financial stress and its associate.
The objective of this study is to list down the major factors behind financial stress of students as well as to fetch the associativity of the leading factors. The intention of the study is to help both student and university authority to deal with financial stress. Students who have low financial optimism about the future are most likely at-risk students. Not knowing the inner facts and not taking timely action is a definite increase in the drop-out rate of students. Administrators can help those students if they can understand the circumstances that are affecting students.
2. Literature review
A student's stress depends on his family status, environment and lifestyle. Therefore, researcher worked to find the impact based on the factors related to socio-cultural environment and lifestyle of university students in Bangladesh (Hossain et al., 2019). After monitoring about 1,140 students for one and half year duration, it was found that several factors like students dissatisfied with university culture, high and excessive recreational screen time, weekly physical inactivity, short and long sleep duration and so on were linked with depression and anxiety. A cross-sectional study found that gender, age, socio-economic conditions, educational background, lack of extra-curricular activities, high screen activity and financial troubles are significantly associated with mental health of young people (Mamun et al., 2020a).
It was related to the fact that welfare or development of undergraduate students depends on the financial circumstances in British institute (Benson-Egglenton, 2019). According to her study the focus was grouping the students based on their performance and financial status. The research found that students doing best in their studies have stronger financial support than the students failing to do better. Another contemporary research has found that the financial stress indicator that separates male and female students the most is whether financial problems interfere with relationships with other people (interference is more for men). It shows older students are less satisfied with their financial position and seem to think that their parents worry more about disappointing them for materialistic reasons (UtkarshPandey et al., 2020).
A recent study used the framework of Duesenberry's (1949) relative income hypothesis (RIH) and revealed a link between perception of relative consumption and financial stress among 965 Black students at 52 predominantly white colleges and universities in the United States (White, 2020). It suggests from RIH literature that not having money to do the same activities as peers creates an environment of anxiety, insecurity and isolation, which are pathways to stress resulting from a lack of financial resources. From the analysis of results of model for overall stress index (age, gender, etc.) with RIH index, “expected time to degree completion” was significant in predicting financial stress (White, 2020). The results also support the hypothesis that comparing consumption to peers and past levels of consumption will increase financial stress among Black college students.
Study of Robb (2017) shows that subjective well-being is strongly associated with the individuals' financial self-efficacy. In this research after taking a sample of 324 undergraduate students from a major university an analysis was conducted to see their behavior of being good. This research found that students having financial stress scored lower in subjective well-being measures than the others. This research also found a good relationship between financial stress and positive mental growth. Another research on British undergraduate students done by researcher Richardson et al. shows that financial stress forced students to leave their study and, in some cases, it is even more dangerous and the study was done based on the data of 454 first-year undergraduate students (Richardson et al., 2017). This study is also showing that the situation is actually getting worse day by day and creating depression, poorer anxiety, global mental health and alcohol dependence over time. To relate financial state and student's development it is not enough to relate with negative impact. Students where provided financial aid, were more successful and dropout was relatively less than the students who were not financially aided (Robb, 2017). But the research also included that though it improved their status but did not have any effect on some points like completing their degree timely. Student's loan and financial stress is related with their performance (Baker and Montalto, 2019). Finding of their research was that there are several classes of students based on their GPA but not for everyone the prediction was accurate; moreover, low financial stressed students' GPA was not frequently that bad, but students reporting high financial stress had significantly lower GPA in common. Chen et al. (2017) presented a survey that is focusing on the impact of contextual determinants on depression, anxiety and stress targeting a group of university students. Their aim was to determine a student's mental health based on their self-reported mental health and how these impacts varied by depression, anxiety and stress.
Based on their questionnaire the main reason for their depression was family issues, secondly their grade point average and third one was social issues. There were some other factors which were considered but those are minor.
Baker and Montalto (2019) present a methodology which can discover rest quality as a potential go-between undergrads' work hours and burdensome manifestations and to look at for intercession model may vary across understudies detailing various degrees of budgetary strain. Understudy business hours are a noteworthy indicator of understudies' psychological prosperity while thinking about their latent capacity sway on their rest. Moreover, understudies announcing more significant levels of monetary pressure are most in danger of being affected by this procedure. Rest aggravation has a complex relationship with gloom, both going before and following the beginning and repeat of discouragement (Othman et al., 2019). Self-detailed understudy credit obligation adds to an improved probability of ending school (Peltz et al., 2020), in spite of the fact that understudies with the most noteworthy measure of college announced understudy advance obligation have a diminished probability of ceasing school one-year later when contrasted with understudies with no understudy advance obligation. Strikingly, right now those who looked for monetary directing were bound to end school inside the following year. The increasing expense of advanced education and the subsequent measure of understudy obligation is a current issue for not just understudies and their families (Nyer et al., 2013). Joo et al. (2008) define the money-related pressure which is generally experienced among understudies and is related with antagonistic scholastic, psychological wellness and physical wellbeing results. Shockingly, no approved proportions of budgetary pressure have been produced for undergrad populaces. The present investigation was directed to produce and assess a proportion of money-related worry for college understudies. Bennett et al. (2015) said that monetary pressure is not just as a failure to meet one's financial obligations, yet in addition as being impacted by mental factors, for example, perspectives, convictions and psychological evaluations of requests and accessible assets. Introduce an intellectual methodology by concentrating on the directing job of budgetary self-adequacy on the connection between monetary pressure and money-related assistance chasing. Information from the 2010 Ohio Student Financial Wellness Survey is breaking down (Northern et al., 2010). Calculated relapse results show that the individuals who are Black, have had a budgetary instruction course, have bigger current understudy credit obligation, experience more elevated levels of money related pressure and have high monetary self-adequacy will in general look for help from experts. The effect of monetary worries on by and large psychological wellness has become a famous point among scientists and specialists. Right now, potential relationships of money-related tension were investigated utilizing an example of 180 undergrads who looked for administrations at a college (Aldana and Liljenquist, 1998). Though tuition fees for tertiary level students have not increased, because of impact of COVID students demanded to hold off tuition fees during pandemic (Lim et al., 2014). There is limited study on financial stress of tertiary level students of Bangladesh (Huda et al., 2021) though a lot of studies have conducted on mental stress of the students (Arusha and Biswas, 2020; Kabir et al., 2021; Al Mamun et al., 2021). Hossain et al. (2019) mentioned that students who are experiencing increased levels of financial distress that may call for a referral to an appropriate professional.
3. Materials and methods
3.1 Data collection and process
The survey was conducted among tertiary level students from different departments of different levels of the Universities of Bangladesh. The data was collected through a semi-structured self-administrative questionnaire using Google form. Before finalizing the questionnaire, a pilot test was performed as well as expert opinion was taken for checking the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. After adjusting the missing data, a total 571 respondents were considered as sample for analysis to reach the expected outcome. Then data was transferred into Excel from Google form. After filtering the data, the data was transformed into Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.
3.2 Analytical tools
3.2.1 Chi square
To find the associations between different categorical variables Chi squares (where
3.2.2 Cramer's V
Chi square only can determine the association between categorical variables, whereas the value of Carmer's V (equation 1) indicates strength of the association. The value of Cramer's V lies between 0 and 1. Close to 0 indicates weak or low association, whereas close to 1 indicates strong or very high relation.here c and r are the number of columns and rows of the cross table respectively. Less than 0.10 indicates weak, in between 0.10 and 0.15, in between 0.15 and 0.25 and greater than 0.25 as the value of Cramer's V indicates weak, moderate, strong and very strong association respectively.
3.2.3 Ordinal regression analysis
Ordinal regression analysis has used as the dependent variable of the study – financial stress (Not stressed, stressed, highly stressed) is ordinal. Simple and multiple ordinal regression model is applied in the study to measure the odds ratio and adjusted odds ratio of the associated factors of financial stress. Equation (2) shows the simple ordinal regression equation.
3.3 Operational definition
Financial stress: It is not possible to measure financial stress of a student directly. Therefore, it was computed using the following items with five-point Likert scale and reliability of the measurement is presented in Table 1.
Cannot do personal activity properly because of shortage of money.
I feel stress for dues.
I cannot participate university programs because of shortage of money.
Cannot do academic activity properly because of shortage of money.
Cannot do social activity properly because of shortage of money.
The total scores have categories into three levels to measure financial stressors. In this paper, we have considered three categories of stress. (1) Not stress (2) Stress (3) Highly stressed. The total scores in less than 7.5 has been considered as not stress category, scores between 7.5 and 15 has been declared as stress and more than 15 scored has been considered as highly stress category. So responses of the students have scored into three separate categories to classify whether they are stress or not and level of stress.
Dues: Tuition fees that are unpaid to the institution considered as dues.
Loan: Borrowing money from others like friends, relatives for their academic or personal purpose to participate in various activities has been considered loan.
3.4 Hypotheses
Hypotheses for the study were as follows.
There is significant association between socio-demographic variables and financial stressor of a tertiary level student
There is significant association between economic factors and financial stressor of a tertiary level student
There is significant impact of socio-demographic variables on financial stressor of a tertiary level student
There is significant impact of economic factors on financial stressor of a tertiary level student
4. Results and discussion
Table 2 represents the association of the demographic factors like gender, living status and academic year with the financial stress status of the students. Around 87.1% females were stressed, whereas more than 91% male students felt financial stress. There is a significant association between gender and financial stress status. The association status was also found moderate by achieving the value of Cramer's V with 0.11. Around 87.6% students were found in stress category who were living with their family. At 5% level of significance, the variable living status has considered that there was significance association with financial stress as the p value is < 0.05. On the other hand, academic year was no significance association and also found very weak association with financial stress obtained the value of Cramer's V with 0.077. Some more variables have also considered as demographic variables and also found no significance association with the financial stress like department, program (day, evening), etc. though those have not showed in the Table 2. Therefore, the hypothesis H1a is true for the factor – gender and living status, whereas the hypothesis H1a is not true for academic year.
The proportion with the association between economic factors and financial stress has shown in Table 3. Through the different question by which the stress has measures which have been described earlier have been considered as stress measurement variables. From the following table (Table 3), it has shown that around almost 94.4% respondents were in stress that got financial support from the university. Considering the p values, it can be concluding that, there was a significance association with financial stress though the strength of the relationship was very weak as Cramer's value was 0.097. Approximately 89.7% students have found who need loan at the end of the semester and have categorized in stress category. With the financial stress, loan variable has also found a significant association with p < 0.01 and has found very strong relation (Cramer's V > 0.25). Those who have not personal income almost 86.4% found in stressed and also has significant association with financial stress. 88.5% students were found stressed those have dues in the University and have moderate association with financial stress (Cramer's V < 0.25). Financial stress has a strong impact on the participation in different activities like university, academic, social and personal. Also these variables were found to have a strong significant (p < 0.01) association with financial stress. The hypothesis H1b, that is, there is significant association between economic factors and financial stressor of a tertiary level student is true.
Table 4 shows the result of ordinal regression by calculating the adjusted and unadjusted odds by including some demographic and financial measurement variables. Students who have responded to live without their family were more likely to face financial stress [OR: 1.212 (1.048, 1.487); AOR: 1.139 (1.003, 1.218)] than those who live with their family. Beiter et al. (2015) explained that the students who lived in off campus had more stressed. Male students have more than 1.5 times higher financial stress than female students. Gender is a significant factor for financial stress from unadjusted model, but it is not significant for the adjusted model. However, Åslund et al. (2014) also found that women felt more financial stress than male. The students who have always dues in the university had more than two times higher financial stress than the student who did not has any dues to university. Even the students who rarely faced dues in the university also had about 1.5 times higher financial stress than the student who did not has any dues to the university. A student who always needed to borrow money for either academic purpose or personal use had very high financial stress than the student who never borrow or loan money. Britt et al. (2017) found that student loan is cause of financial stress. Based on the findings, university can take care of their students, which may help to improve performance of the students (Joo et al., 2008) as well as will helps to reduce the rate of suicide among students (Mamun et al., 2020b).
5. Conclusion
Financial stress is such a factor that has a direct effect on academic performance and social activities of a student. This study identified the socio demographic factors that are associated with financial stress of undergraduate students as well as the risk of the associated factors. The outcomes of the financial stress have a negative impact and vigorous effect not only to the academic performance of the students but also to their social and personal activities.
Gender, living status with family financial support from university, need loan, cannot participate university program properly due to financial problem, cannot participate academic activity properly due to financial problem, cannot participate social activity properly due to financial problem, cannot participate personal activity properly due to financial problem and have personal income are significantly associated factors with financial stress. Except gender, all the variables – living status, dues to university and loan have significant impact on the financial stress. However, the student who has always loan for academic purpose or personal use had more financial stress than that of the student who did not has any loan.
Findings of the study might help tertiary level institute to understand their students properly. A psychologist can imply findings of the study during counseling a student of tertiary level. Notably policymaker should consider financial stress and its determinants to make a friendly environment for students of any social status. However, this study uses self-administrative method using Google form for data collection which may cause sampling bias. In addition, mental stress is not considered in the study which may be another dimension of research.
Reliability of the items to measure financial stress of the tertiary level students
| Cronbach's Alpha | No. of items |
|---|---|
| 0.820 | 5 |
Association between the socio-demographic variables and the financial stressor
| Variables | Categories | Level of stress | Total | Test result | p value | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not stressed | Stressed | Highly stressed | Chi square | Cramer's V value | ||||
| Gender | Female | 14 (10.7%) | 114 (87%) | 3 (2.3%) | 131 (23.1%) | 6.72** | 0.11 | 0.035 < 0.05 |
| Male | 21 (4.8%) | 397 (91.4%) | 18 (4.1%) | 436 (76.9%) | ||||
| Academic year | First year | 10 (7.6%) | 116 (88.5%) | 5 (3.8%) | 131 (22.9%) | 6.87 | 0.077 | 0.34 > 0.1 |
| Second year | 17 (8.7%) | 171 (87.2%) | 8 (4.1%) | 196 (34.3%) | ||||
| Third year | 5 (2.8%) | 168 (93.9%) | 6 (4.6%) | 179 (31.3%) | ||||
| Final year | 3 (4.6%) | 59 (90.8%) | 3 (13.6%) | 65 (11.4%) | ||||
| Living status | With family | 22 (8.8%) | 220 (87.6%) | 9 (3.6%) | 251 (44.1%) | 5.32** | 0.097 | 0.069 < 0.05 |
| Without family | 13 (4.1%) | 292 (91.8%) | 13 (4.1%) | 318 (55.9%) | ||||
Note(s): ***, ** and * represents 1%, 5% and 10% level of significance
Association between economic factors of a student financial stressors
| Variables | Categories | Level of stress | Total | Test result | p value | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not stress | Stress | Highly stress | Chi square | Cramer's V value | ||||
| Financial support from university | Yes | 2 (1.9%) | 102 (94.4%) | 4 (3.7%) | 108 (19.1%) | 10.704** | 0.097 | 0.030 |
| No | 32 (8.5%) | 329 (87.7%) | 14 (3.7%) | 375 (66.4%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 1 (6.2%) | 77 (93.9%) | 4 (4.9%) | 82 (14.5%) | ||||
| Need loan | Never | 22 (30.6%) | 50 (69.4%) | 0 | 72 (12.9%) | 125.31*** | 0.335 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 7 (13.7%) | 44 (86.3%) | 0 | 144 (25.8%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 4 (2.8%) | 139 (96.5%) | 1 (7%) | 97 (17.4%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 2 (2.1%) | 94 (96.9%) | 1 (1%) | 97 (17.4%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 174 (89.7%) | 20 (10.3%) | 194 (34.8%) | ||||
| Cannot participate university program properly due to financial problem | Never | 31 (22%) | 110 (78%) | 0 | 141 (25.4%) | 132.77*** | 0.345 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 4 (4.7%) | 82 (95.3%) | 0 | 86 (15.5%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 0 | 153 (97.5%) | 4 (2.5%) | 157 (28.2%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 77 (15.4%) | 2 (9.1%) | 79 (14.2%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 77 (82.8%) | 16 (17.2%) | 93 (16.7%) | ||||
| Cannot participate academic activity properly due to financial problem | Never | 30 (21.6%) | 109 (78.4%) | 0 | 139 (25%) | 134.51*** | 0.347 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 3 (4.8%) | 60 (95.2%) | 0 | 63 (11.3%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 2 (1.3%) | 148 (98.7%) | 0 | 150 (26.9%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 103 (95.4%) | 5 (22.7%) | 108 (19.4%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 80 (82.5%) | 17 (17.4%) | 97 (17.4%) | ||||
| Cannot participate social activity properly due to financial problem | Never | 32 (12.8%) | 218 (87.2%) | 0 | 250 (45.5%) | 104.537*** | 0.308 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 3 (3.4%) | 83 (94.4%) | 1 (1.1%) | 87 (15.8%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 0 | 130 (95.6%) | 6 (4.4%) | 136 (24.7%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 37 (88.1%) | 5 (11.9%) | 42 (7.6%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 25 (71.4%) | 10 (28.6%) | 35 (6.4%) | ||||
| Cannot participate personal activity properly due to financial problem | Never | 30 (16.6%) | 151 (83.4%) | 0 | 181 (32.9%) | 107.468*** | 0.312 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 4 (5.3%) | 71 (94.7%) | 0 | 75 (13.6%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 1 (7%) | 144 (97.3%) | 3 (2%) | 148 (26.9%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 71 (93.4%) | 5 (6.6%) | 79 (13.8%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 56 (80%) | 14 (20%) | 80 (12.7%) | ||||
| Have personal income | Never | 35 (10.2%) | 286 (86.4%) | 22 (6.4%) | 343 (62.5%) | 31.199*** | 0.187 | <0.001 |
| Rare | 0 | 70 (12.8%) | 0 | 70 (12.8%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 0 | 76 (13.8%) | 0 | 76 (13.8%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 27 (4.9%) | 0 | 27 (4.9%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 33 (6%) | 0 | 33 (6%) | ||||
| Need to contribute in family | Never | 34 (11.1%) | 257 (83.7%) | 16 (5.2%) | 307 (89.8%) | 15.068* | 0.148 | 0.058 |
| Rare | 1 (6.7%) | 12 (80%) | 2 (13.3%) | 15 (4.4%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 0 | 9 (90%) | 1 (10%) | 10 (2.9%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 1 (100%) | 0 | 1 (100%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 6 (66.7%) | 3 (33.3%) | 9 (2.6%) | ||||
| Has dues | Never | 32 (9.2%) | 307 (88.5%) | 8 (2.3%) | 347 (62.3%) | 15.068* | 0.158 | 0.058 |
| Rare | 1 (1%) | 88 (90.7%) | 8 (8.2%) | 97 (17.4%) | ||||
| Sometimes | 0) | 18 (3.2%) | 2 (0.4%) | 80 (14.4%) | ||||
| Most of the times | 0 | 12 (2.2%) | 1 (0.2%) | 20 (3.6%) | ||||
| Always | 0 | 6 (66.7%) | 3 (33.3%) | 13 (2.3%) | ||||
Note(s): ***, ** and * represents 1, 5 and 10% level of significance
Impact of the associated socio-demographic and economic factors on financial stress of the students
| Variables | Unadjusted | Adjusted | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Odds ratio | 95% confidence interval | p value | Odds ratio | 95% confidence interval | p value | ||
| Living status | Without family | 1.212 | (1.048, 1.487) | <0.001 | 1.139 | (1.003, 1.218) | 0.013 |
| With family | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Gender | Male | 1.721 | (1.524, 1.961) | 0.023 | 1.536 | (0.897, 2.488) | 0.517 |
| Female | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dues | Rare | 1.507 | (1.227, 1.821) | 0.037 | 1.477 | (1.158, 1.773) | 0.046 |
| Sometimes | 1.884 | (1.497, 2.099) | 0.024 | 1.834 | (1.499, 1.968) | 0.032 | |
| Most of the times | 1.619 | (1.338, 1.983) | 0.018 | 1.522 | (1.257, 1.843) | 0.019 | |
| Always | 2.281 | (1.964, 2.674) | <0.001 | 2.019 | (1.991, 2.527) | <0.001 | |
| Never | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Loan | Rare | 12.197 | (11.541,12.961) | 0.041 | 12.182 | (11.564, 13.041) | 0.048 |
| Sometimes | 14.889 | (12.294, 17.954) | <0.001 | 14.880 | (11.942, 16.509) | <0.001 | |
| Most of the times | 92.004 | (73.189, 111.915) | <0.001 | 90.017 | (69.147, 107.912) | <0.001 | |
| Always | 257.439 | (168.954, 338.183) | <0.001 | 256.211 | (171.289, 328.438) | <0.001 | |
| Never | 1 | 1 | |||||
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