A Study of Mindfulness, Academic Stress and Attention levels among Mizo College Students

Abstract

The present study investigates the relationship between Mindfulness, Academic Stress and Attention levels among Mizo College students. Participants for the study included 159 Mizo college students, who are studying in different colleges in Mizoram. The participants of the study were measured using 3 scales namely Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer et al., 2006), Scale of Academic Stress (Rajendran and Kallippan., 1990) and Attention Control Scale (Derryberry and Reed., 2001). Results showed the tests to be trustworthy for the target population, i.e., r=0.60, r=0.94 and r=0.70 for the Mindfulness scale, Academic Stress scale and Attention scale respectively. The results of the correlation analysis indicated significant relationship between Mindfulness, Academic Stress and Attention for both males and females. Among males, higher levels of Mindfulness are significantly associated with lower academic stress (r= -2.91*), suggesting that males who exhibit greater mindfulness, will experience lower levels of academic stress. Additionally, Mindfulness is positively correlated with attention among males (r= .299*), which indicates that increased levels of Mindfulness are linked to increased attention. The analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between academic stress and attention among males (r= -3.20**), indicating that higher levels of academic stress is associated with lower attention. For females, there is a significant positive correlation between Mindfulness and attention (r= .270*), which suggests that females with higher levels of Mindfulness tend to exhibit increased levels of attention. However, there seems to be no significant correlation observed between Mindfulness and Academic stress among females found in this study. Thus, there is a need to investigate into other factors that may be associated with academic stress and in turn, this particular study thereby highlights and sheds the mere significance on the various benefits of practicing Mindfulness and how college students can be better equipped to deal with the various internal as well as external stressors in a more efficient manner. Therefore, this study can be considered as a baseline for further studies and researches on this given area.