Perceived Sources of Stress among Junior & Mid-Senior Egyptian Dental Students

The purpose of this study was to identify the sources of stress among dental students enrolled at Pharos University in Alexandria (PUA) - Egypt, and to explore the role of gender, level of undergraduate study and residence with parents on perceived stressors.

A thirty-item self-reported modified version of the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire was administered to 537 junior and mid-senior undergraduate dental students during the academic fall semester 2010, with a response rate of 79.89%.

Workload, performance pressure, and self-efficacy beliefs constituted the most stress-provoking factors. Female students experienced greater stress than males for all stressor items except for "Self-Efficacy Beliefs" and "Faculty & Administration" with no statistically significant difference by gender. Mid-senior dental students registered higher levels of perceived stress for "Workload", "Self-Efficacy Beliefs", and "Personal Factors" stressors in comparison to their junior peers. Those students who lived away of their parents were at higher risk of perceived stress than those students who lived with their parents. "Uncertainty about future dental career" was the first best predictor variable by gender. Whereas, "Difficulty of classwork" was the first predictor variable by both level of undergraduate study and residence with parents.

Female dental students had higher mean overall problem scores compared to their male counterparts, mid-senior students showed some higher perceived problems compared to junior students, and students who lived away from their parents revealed higher levels of perceived stress.