Individual Research Proposal
Name:- Sandeep kaur
Student ID:- 00279387T
Topic Cordinator:- Clare Phillips
Subject:- PUBH6013
Table of Contents
Research question and knowledge gap 4
Selection of the participants 5
Literature review
Academic stress is seen to be the most common mental or emotional state that international students experience. Most of the students feel this stress due to issues like stress burden for exams, future thoughts and plans to build up a good career makes them take more burdens in their minds, sometimes resulting in different psychological problems (Diaz, 2018). A sizeable literature review in stress management study has found that students can manage and eliminate the stress factor by being self-regulated and mindful. Depression, anxiety, and useless stress factor are harmful to an individual and its society as well. This study will suggest ways about managing academic stress among international undergraduate students.
The studies show that most of the students suffer from excessive stress for reasons like cultural and family pressure, the competition to pursue good grades at graduation level and to earn a better opportunity in future professional life. These students mainly lack self –regulation and are unable to manage the burdens tactically. Thus, they require to under-go a strong meditation process to avoid these stress factors within their minds (Bhogal, Thakur & Shete, 2016). Self-regulation can be defined as the technique or ability of an individual to calm oneself while facing any kind of emotional distress or dysphasia. For achieving this particular stress control technique one must have the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational thoughts and goals to achieve behavioral change for a certain period. It can be achieved by the successful regulation of behaviors, emotions, feelings, and cognitions. Mindfulness also plays a significant role in supporting a healthy life. It is an effective practice for handling the process of self-regulation within individuals (Jennings, 2017). Mindfulness is referred to as maintaining feelings, thoughts, surrounding environment and bodily sensations through a nurturing and gentle lens.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) assists the students to cope up and fight with stress. It is a group-based training program that was created relied on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR). The theory consists of strategies that assist the students to deal with academic stress. The adjustment process between inadequate and adequate coping responses is known as the Mindful-Coping process (Singh, 2019). Meditating processes control the self-esteem and give an individual the mental patients and thoughts to handle stress situations occurring in their life. Mindfulness significantly imposes an impact on self-regulation when it is being accompanied by academic stresses. Students these days often become frustrated due to certain external relations with peers and also become over-emotional on any one’s reaction in social media. Self- regulation practices will also help them to overcome these kinds of small issues which often turn out to become highly emotional and sensitive. Students must practice these meditational processes to get relief from these kinds of minor issues that can certainly give rise to mental problems which become a serious factor for the student’s career. Often it is found that some students develop suicidal tendencies within themselves for some petty incidents occurring in their college life (Liu & Lin, 2019). This kind of incident makes the students mentally weak and reduces their self judgmental capability. They are unable to choose an alternative solution to their mental stress and finally opt for such misleading steps like suicide. Students of colleges, therefore, are given proper Personality Development (PD) classes so that they can understand their capabilities and thus move on in life with the current situations.
The international students gain benefits from meditation practice by managing their emotional and mental dissatisfaction or stress burden. Students who properly follow these guidelines can handle stress factors efficiently and quite easily. It gives people conceptual thoughts rather than unconventional and meaningless thoughts which results in high mental stress (Horiuchi, Tsuda, Aoki, Yoneda & Sawaguchi, 2018). Procedures have been found quite effective to guide several students to the right track towards eliminating their curricular burdens and allow them to think logically. Thus, meditation and related stress relief techniques are very important for international students who are in the process of taking a huge mental burden and stress.
Research question and knowledge gap
- How international students do experience the practice of meditation about reducing stress levels?
The research focuses on international students who practice meditation to decrease the level of stress. It is important to determine and evaluate how, why and what are the benefits of practicing meditation.
Methodology
The use of different research tools and techniques would assist to carry out the research study in an appropriate manner. A descriptive research design would be applied to examine the research topic. The research design would assist to understand the importance of the topic and also allows collecting the data. The secondary data would be collected from books, journals, and the internet. The primary data would be collected from interviews (Shodhganga, 2019). The researcher would collect qualitative data from the participants. The grounded theory is referred to the set of systematic techniques to conduct the qualitative research which aims towards the development of theory. The theory is important because it provides sequential or explicit guidelines to conduct the qualitative research, strategies to manage the analytic inquiry phase, integrates and streamlines data gathering and analysis advances conceptual qualitative data analysis and legitimizes the qualitative analysis as the scientific inquiry. Phenomenology is considered to be an approach to qualitative research that focuses on the common experiences of people within a specific group (Course, 2019). The interview would be conducted with the people who know the experience, situation or event.
Selection of the participants
Quota sampling technique would be adopted where people would be selected as per their qualities or traits. The researcher would select four people consisting of his friends and colleagues. The participants are selected specifically for carrying out the interview process (Sagepub, 2019).
Interview questions
Question 1
How international students practice meditation to decrease their stress levels?
Question 2
How the medication practices assists to decrease the stress level?
Question 3
What are the factors that influence the experiences of the student to practice meditation?
Question 4
Is there is an alternative method of decreasing the stress level?
Question 5
Is there any negative effect of practicing meditation among international students?
Question 6
What sort of diffculities you face during meditation?
Question 7
Which environment is suitable for doing mediation?
Question 8
Is there is any age limitation of doing meditation?
Personal reflection
Most of the international students face stress because of academic stress. I understand the fact that studying away from home is difficult irrespective of the fact of how much one loves to read that subject. It is not less than a struggle to stay away from family and live in a completely different environment. The language barrier is also a major cause of stress as people face difficulty in communicating with others because of dialects and accents. I was searching a way out to red rid of this stress as it was hampering my studies. After interviewing many of my classmates I came to know that mediation is an effective way to reduce stress as it is capable of identifying stress in an early stage. Mediation according to me also helps in minimizing conflicts and work-related stress. In a new country where the students feel unsafe and anxious, it is necessary to talk to the classmates which will in turn help to reduce emotional strain. My emotional strain has motivated me to find a way of getting emotional support far from family. I took an interest in determining and evaluating how the experiences of the international students in practicing meditation assist them to decrease the level of stress. I have collected information and also examined the situations of the students. I have found that meditation is considered to be an effective method to manage the stress level in an appropriate manner.
References
Bhogal, R., Thakur, G., & Shete, S. (2016). Differential impact of Shavasana and meditation on memory scores in healthy college students: A randomized controlled study. Yoga Mimamsa, 48(1), 9. doi: 10.4103/0044-0507.198705
Course. (2019). Qualitative Research Methods Overview. Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://course.ccs.neu.edu/is4800sp12/resources/qualmethods.pdf
Diaz, F. (2018). Relationships Among Meditation, Perfectionism, Mindfulness, and Performance Anxiety Among Collegiate Music Students. Journal Of Research In Music Education, 66(2), 150-167. doi: 10.1177/0022429418765447
Horiuchi, S., Tsuda, A., Aoki, S., Yoneda, K., & Sawaguchi, Y. (2018). Coping as a mediator of the relationship between stress mindset and psychological stress response: a pilot study. Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5840190/
Jennings, R. (2017). International Students at Community Colleges: Challenges and Opportunities for This Unique Segment of U.S Higher Education. New Directions For Student Services, 2017(158), 61-71. doi: 10.1002/ss.20220
Liu, W., & Lin, J. (2019). The role of meditation in college students’ neuroticism and mental health. Translational Neuroscience, 10(1), 112-117. doi: 10.1515/tnsci-2019-0019
Sagepub. (2019). Selecting Research Participants. Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/57599_Chapt_6__Evans_Methods_in_Psychological_Research_3e.pdf
Shodhganga. (2019). Research Methodology. Retrieved 25 October 2019, from https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/3727/12/12_chapter%202.pdf
Singh, D. (2019). Effect of Pranayama and “OM” meditation on visual reaction time, hand grip dynamometer endurance and stress in medical students. Journal Of Medical Science And Clinical Research, 7(7). doi: 10.18535/jmscr/v7i7.140