Stress in High School - A Comparison between South Korea and Sweden

Sammanfattning: Author: Caroline RystedtTitle: Stress in High School - A Comparison between South Korea and Sweden Supervisor: Gabriel Jonsson This thesis aims at learning about stress-related issues that affect high school students in South Korea and Sweden through survey studies, and ultimately finding possible solutions to tackle them. The quantitative, qualitative and comparative research methods were utilised to achieve the objectives. Three research questions in place are: A) Do high school students in Korea and Sweden feel stressed because of school? B)Are there any similarities in terms of causes of stress in comparison? C) Do the high school students in these two countries handle stress well? Through background research it appeared that living in the South Korean society was highly stressful; South Korea had one of the highest suicide rates amongst the OECD countries, and the figures showed that many of those were high school students. On the other hand, there were sources suggesting that the Swedish adolescents felt more stressed nowadays than the previous generation did. An online survey was conducted to garner information and opinions from second and third year students in South Korea and Sweden respectively; Subsequent analysis based on the coping andstressors theories was employed to assess the outcome of the survey. The results indicated that school had significant influence on students’ mental health - students felt stressed in both countries. There were similarities in terms of causes of stress, despite the South Korean students feeling more stressed than their Swedish counterparts based on the survey answers. The students from both countries stated that fear over uncertain future was one of the main causes of stress, and that worries over university admissions put them under pressure. The study also showed certain differences in the copying ability of the two student groups. The conclusion of this thesis aims to achieve a better understanding of high school students’ well-being needs and seek possible means of tackling stress based on the student respondents’ own proposals. Key words: stress, high school, coping, stressors, internet survey, suicide, adolescents