HUE UNIVERSITY

HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Research topic: Research on psychological difficulties in studies of

first-year English student of Hue University of Foreign Languages.

Researchers:
HUỲNH THỊ THÙY LINH(20F7510815)
PHẠM THỊ MỸ DUYÊN(20F7510623)
TRẦN THỊ THANH(20F7510348)

Research Methods - Group 17

Instructor: Ms. Tôn Nữ Như Ngọc
Hue, 2022
I.Introduction.

1.Background to the topic:(Huỳnh Thị Thùy Linh)

Learning activities are the main activities of students at universities. Thanks to
that, students can acquire knowledge and form skills. However, not all learning
activities are easy and smooth, there will be difficulties and stagnation that
adversely affect learning results. In fact, the first-year student is the transition from
high school to the university environment, which is still strange and unfamiliar
with the new environment with a large amount of knowledge, teaching and
learning methods. In addition, most university students come from many different
regions with different living and economic conditions compared to the pace of life
in big cities. Furthermore, with a timid and apprehensive personality, many
university students do not dare seek outside help when facing difficulties. It is
these problems that lead to their having many psychological difficulties in their
studies. For these rea
sons, we conducted research on the topic "Psychological difficulties in the studies
of freshmen, majoring in HUE University of Foreign Languages."
2.Research question(phạm thị mỹ duyên)
1.What psychological problems do they often face when studying?
2. How do that problem affect their studies?
3. How do they deal with that problem?
3.Methodology(phạm thị mỹ duyên)
-Research subject: freshmen , majoring in English at Hue University of Foreign
Languages
-Quanlity:100 students
4:The method of data collection(huỳnh thi thùy linh)
-The questionnaire method is the main method.This method helps us to conduct a
survey with a large number of participants as well as get the necessary information
in a short time to make more accurate decisions. Therefore, our team applied the
questionnaire to the study for a number of reasons, such as saving time; the ability
to analyze, compare, and contrast easily; making it easier to get results; and less
pressure on respondents.
-The Questionnaire includes:
+15 closed questions and will be designed according to 3 levels: 3-2-1
corresponding to : often-sometimes-never.Thanks to these levels, it is easy to grasp
the percentage of the current university students who have a serious problem. This
section focuses on surveying students' general thoughts about psychology in
learning.
+5 open questions aim to learn more about psychological obstacles in learning that
they themselves have encountered or how students want to improve that problem?
-The questionnaire will be designed in an online format so that students can easily
participate. In addition, the survey will be conducted in Vietnamese to ensure that
the participants clearly understand the content of the questions and make it easier
and more comfortable for them to answer.
II.LITERATURE REVIEW (huỳnh thị thùy linh +phạm thị mỹ duyên)
In this section, to further clarify this research topic we would like to offer an overall
view of previous studies

Frequency of depression, anxiety and stress among university students.

- Study authors: Saba Asif, Azka Mudassar, Talala Zainab Shahzad, Mobeen
Raouf, and Tehmina Pervaiz
-Research subject : 500 students university students in Sialkot, Pakistan.
-The Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences has published frequency of depression,
anxiety and stress among university students, which assesses the prevalence of
mental health problems (Depression, anxiety and stress) in students to take
measures to improve psychological health for students and create an environment.
learning better and running smoothly, focusing on and promoting the mental
health of students during learning is essential.
- Research method :The researcher applied the method of random sample
selection techniques and then developed consent forms and demographic slips for
students. A self-developed demographic table was used to gather demographic
information. Mental health levels will be assessed using a cold, lull and straight
score scale (DASS-21) among the students to collect data.Specifically, the
researcher chose to collect data from three of Sialkot's universities in which he
took only 500 students from those universities and used a simple method of
selecting randomized samples to conduct research at GC Women's University,
Sialkot.
- Results :After completing this method with. They found that depression, anxiety
and stress readings among college students were 75%, 88.4% and 84.4%,
respectively. The results of the study showed rates of depression in the normal
range (25%), mild (16%), average (35.8%), severe (14.6%) and extremely severe
(8.6%). Anxiety rates were in the normal range (11.6%), mild (4.4%), average
(19.4%), severe (17.8%) and extremely severe (46.8%). Stress was normal
(15.6%), mild (33.8%), moderate (35.4%), heavy (13.2%) and extremely heavy
(2.8%).
-Comment:The Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences' study applied the Survey
research method to investigate research on the problem and collect data. That
method will definitely pave the way for them to find out the psychological
problems in the learning of students of all three schools will be more intensive.
Besides, the number of participants is quite ideal. However, their research methods
are too few, not guaranteed from the two methods used to collect data or more, so
we are skeptical about the percentage of data provisions from students to
researchers for them to study in depth is limited.

Sources and Outlets of stress among University students :Correlations

between stress and unhealthy habits
-Author Jacqueline Britz, studied the origins of the stress of the student group at
James Madision University.
-Research subject:124 first-year students at James Madision University.
- Research method: The author used the survey method by questionnaire. It is
distributed to students during class hours and spends enough time completing the
survey. In time, the student's exercise volume is average. The survey consists of
two parts.
 Part of the focus is on collecting demographic data about students,
including gender, school year, age, and GPA. The questions then focused on
determining the student's stress levels: students were first asked to rate their
average overall stress levels, besides how often they found themselves
under stress. Part of the survey asked participants to rate stress levels of a
number of factors including academic workload, finances, future planning,
living conditions, social life, close relationships, body image, time
management, extracurricular activities
 Part 2 of the study first focused on how students think they respond to
stress. It asked about how engaged participants engaged in a variety of
unhealthy and healthy behaviors (including sleep and rest, exercise,
drinking, smoking, and eating nutritiously). A lot of effort is focused on
making sure the questions are asked in a way that is both brief and not
leading. In addition, limitations on objectivity have been considered.
 Although the ranking of sources and stress levels, in addition to personal
health, is subjective, students have been presented with scales to rank each
factor (from levels 1 to 6, of which 6 is the highest level, in most cases). In
addition, space has been provided to specify extenuating circumstances that
may falsify the results.
-Results: According to the results of the study, about 50% of the 124 participants
reported experiencing feelings of stress with high frequency. And the source of
stress is mainly due to the workload of learning and time management .The effects
of these stress factors are due to conflicts in relationships, changes in grades,
decreased sleep, decline in health, increased partying, weight fluctuations and
mood swings.

In addition, the study results showed that about 57% of students slept only 6-7
hours per night.29% reported sleeping longer than that number, while 14% of
students slept less hours. In terms of the correlation between stress and sleep, of
the 63 students with higher levels of stress (ranked 4th, 5th or 6th on a scale of 1 to
6), 77.8% slept less than 7 hours per night. Among students who reported lower
stress levels, a slightly lower rate, 63.9%, slept less than 7 hours. Of the 36
students who slept more than 7 hours per night, 61.1% reported lower stress levels.
This stress is not only associated with sleep deprivation but also with generally low
relaxation times.

In addition, their diet is not healthy. About 80 percent of students don't eat
breakfast daily, 57 percent eat less breakfast 4 or 5 times per week, and 12.9
percent say they never eat breakfast. Most students don't mention what they
consider to be breakfast; however, some students intend to eat bagels and cream
cheese, or Pop-Tarts for breakfast.

-Comment:Mr. Jacqueline Britz's research used questionnaires to research. That

method makes it easy for him to get results through level selection. However, this
method has not really convinced readers of the results yet. source of stress
problems. More interviews should be used to find out if their stress levels are
having a serious impact on their lives. To better understand the source of stress.

Dominant Factors that Cause Students’ Difficulties in Learning Abstract

Algebra: A Case Study at a University in Indonesia.
-Study author(s):Agustyaningrum .Nina, Sari, Riska Novia, Abadi,Agus Maman
and Mahmudi,Ali
-Research topic: Research to find out the dominant factors causing difficulties of
students in university.
-Object: the entire semester of students of the teaching course including 30
students of mathematics education department in Riau Kepulauan University,
Indonesia
-Research method: The author uses the research method which is the questionnaire
and interview guide
 The questionnaire is closed with 5 points (strongly agree, agree, neutral,
disagree, strongly disagree) and the questionnaire will be distributed to each
student.
 The interview is prepared based on the questions in the questionnaire, but
the researcher can develop the questions according to the information needs.
The interview was conducted to gather more in-depth information about the
factors. factors that cause learning difficulties. Participants were randomly
selected from respondents who admitted to having difficulty learning
abstract algebra based on the questionnaire results.
-Results: According to the survey, there are 3 strong influencing factors that are
attitudes towards abstract algebra, prior knowledge and teaching materials. In
addition, three other factors also account for a large proportion, namely motivation,
teacher performance and learning methods including factors that make students
difficult to learn.
- Comment: This study is different from the previous two studies. While the
previous two studies only used questionnaires, here the author used of both
methods of questionnaire and interview.It is really good quality, easy to grasp
research information from students. However, the research subjects are quite small,
the data collection maybe flawed, so it is advisable to do more numbers to give a
more precise understanding of the dominant factors of learning difficulty.

Depression, anxiety and stress in different subgroups of first-year university

students from 4-year cohort data:
-Study author : Dr. KinCheunga, Dr. Kin YuenTamb ,Ms. HildaTsanga ,Dr. Lillian
WeiweiZhanga ,Dr. Siu WaiLit
-Research topic: Research on differences among student subgroups in students'
levels of depression, stress, anxiety, academic performance and psychological
status.
-Research subject: first-year university students in a university in Hong Kong 
- Research method :The researchers used cross-sectional survey methods, samples,
mearsures to collect data. Specifically, they chose to collect data from full-time
students, CTT students, international students, Chinese students, first-year student
athletes of a university from Hong Kong by inviting students to complete the
Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) and then this DASS data is merged
with objectively measured data from their records. the university.
-Result:After applying these methods to a university in Hong Kong, 9,479
completed students accounted for 56.5% of the total number of students on
application. And as a result, Community College Transfer Students (CCT) are the
group most at risk of depression, anxiety and stress, and their academic volume is
also highest. Surprisingly, mainstream students were behind CCT students in rates
and levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Student athletes have the highest rates
of depression. Although the trend of depression, anxiety and stress has decreased,
it has only decreased slightly.
-Comment:The Study by the Journal of Affective Disorders adopted three methods
of data collection as a highlight because they paved the way for researchers to
obtain more valuable information for their research.However, the number of
students participating is quite large, leading to too many and inaccurate results.And
all three methods were unable to fully leverage those methods applied to the study,
so we are concerned that the proportion of data taken from the study subjects will
be flawed.
Psychological Factors Affecting Students Academic Performance
Among Freshman Psychology Students in Dire Dawa University
-Study author: Wondu Teshome
-Research subject: 16 first year students in Dire Dawa University
-Research method: The author used the questionnaire method for the survey. The
questionnaire is divided into 4 influences: motivation, stress level, self-efficacy
and anxiety test. Including 7 points scale. which corresponds to completely
incorrect to very true.
 As for motivation, the author divides it into two parts, which are internal
orientation, including four sections, which refer to students' mastery goals
and other internal reasons for taking the course. Besides, there is an external
orientation. ,includes 4 items for easy measurement: score, reward,
competition and other people's rating.
 About self-efficacy includes 8 items, the purpose is to update one's
perception of ability to complete tasks and confidence.
 The anxiety test, which consists of two parts, is cognitive that will address
anxiety, negative thinking, and test performance. .And the emotional
 component of the content is related to emotional and physiological arousal
when doing the test.
-Result: According to the results of the study, the percentage of freshmen who
are anxious about the test is higher than other factors.
-Comment :The research is the conclusion of a research object,research method,
research purpose very complete and clear.From there we can easily understand
the diffulty of freshman and the solution to overcome it.
Last but not least, as we captured the gaps in the studies mentioned above, and
the main subjects of our study were freshmen, who were I was still scared when
I first entered university. We decided to use the online questionnaire and the
questionnaire will be designed in Vietnamese to help find out the psychological
difficulties that students face in their studies practice.

REFERENCES

Ag,N., Sa,R.N., Aba,A.M., & Mah,A.Dominant Factors that Cause Students’

Difficulties in Learning Abstract Algebra: A Case Study at a University in
Indonesia(january 2021).International Journal of Instruction,14(1),847-866.

KinCheunga ; Tam, K.Y. ; Tsanga, h. ; Lillian, W. Z. ; Lit, W. L. (1 September

2020 ). Depression, anxiety and stress in different subgroups of first-year
university students from 4-year cohort
data.Fromhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503271933157X
Reference citation: ( Journal of Affective Disorders. 1 September 2020 )

Jacqueline Britz,E.Pappas. Sources and Outlets of Stress among University

Students:Correlations between Stress and Unhealthy Habits(24 May 2010)

Saba Asif, Azka Mudassar, Shahzad,T. Z. ; Mobeen Raouf, Tehmina Pervaiz .

(2020 ,Jul-Aug). Frequency of depression, anxiety and stress among university
students. from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7372668/
Reference citation: (Pak J Med Sci. 2020 Jul-Aug)
Won,T. Psychological Factors Affecting Students Academic Performance Among
Freshman Psychology Students in Dire Dawa UniversityPsychological Factors
Affecting Students Academic Performance Among Freshman Psychology Students
in Dire Dawa University(February 2018):Dire Dawa University Project