Feminism In India and Impact of Movie 'My Choice'

By: Aakash Tripathi and Siddharth Raina

Introduction:

The official definition of feminism as defined by Wikipedia states that feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.

Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to education, to enter contracts, to have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave etc. Feminists have also worked to promote bodily autonomy and integrity, and to protect women and girls from rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence.

However in the modern times, it is very important to see if feminism is heading in the right direction and is actually working towards empowering women and providing them with equal rights and opportunities in all aspects of life including political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women.

Feminism and feminist movements must be aimed at achieving these equal rights for both men and women. It must be recognised by our society that both men and women must be treated equally and be given equal rights in all aspects.

Motivation:

The idea of feminism essentially promotes equality for both men and women. However it is very important for people to understand the true meaning of the word and what feminist movements aim to achieve.

The first step to do so is to understand what kind of picture is created in the minds of people when they hear the word feminism. Hence we thought that a comprehensive survey would be a big step in understanding what people really understand by the word feminism

Approach:

A comprehensive questionnaire was created to understand what people think about feminism and feminist movements. This questionnaire involved a series of questions ranging from basic questions such as the interpretation of the word feminism by people to several pin pointed questions related to the recently viral video “My Choice”. The idea behind this survey was to get an idea of people’s approach to feminism.

Results:

We raised certain cutting edge questions along with some other similar questions. The results to these questions are summarized below:

  

What is your idea of feminism?

Option A: Equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for men and women.

Option B: Women proving their strength by feminist movements.

Option C: Freedom for a woman to do whatever they wish to do within the framework of national law. 

Option A is the Wikipedia definition of feminism while the other two are extream options for psuedo feminist and anti feminist mindsets. Most people went with option A. 

Are feminist movements demonizing men?

The inner circle is for females and the outer is for the males. This shows a sharp contrast in the number of people agreeing. We can clearly see how same quanta of change is perceived by a group which feels power is slipping as completely different to the other which feels they are at gain. 

Who needs feminism the most?

While people say that rural uneducated women are the ones needing a rise in feminism, Vogue is targeting upper middle class women. This looks like a psychological attempt on these upper middle class women to tap the growing Indian market. 

What are your views on the video “My Choice”?

Option A (Blue): The idea behind the movie is good and the message is precise and well delivered.

Option B (Red): The movie is good, but the message delivered is exaggerated and wrong.

Option C (Green): The idea behind the movie is flawed.

Lot more females saw the movie as perfectly alright as compared to males.



How well Feminism is portrayed in movie ‘My Choice’ on a scale of 1 to 10?

The utility of the movie is rated on a increasing level from left to right. 

Many more women are on the right side as compared to men while many more men are on the left. Though most of the people are in the middle section and find the movie partially effective. The psychology behind is the same as discussed before.

Conclusion:

The results of the survey led to various conclusions. While answering the basic question on the definition of feminism, majority voted that feminism aims at equality between men and women. The survey asked if people believed that feminist movements demonize men, to which the answers differed between men and women. It explains how people look at things from different point of views. Some specific questions were asked to people taking the example of the recently viral video 'My Choice', to which answers were mostly same by majority of men and women however some people had opinions on extreme ends. The results can be concluded by saying that male and female are taking the mediums of spreading feminism differently and the movie 'My Choice' is not targeting the people who actually need feminism but is only taping the Indian markets.

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

2. http://www.quora.com/search?q=feminism

Bystander Effect

Team- Gaurav Suman, Dheerendra Kumar Meena, Akshay Verma

Introduction

Wikipedia definition of Bystander effect,"The Bystander effect, or Bystander apathy is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present".[1]

The concept was first demonstrated by two psychology researchers, John Darley and Bibb Latane in laboratory in 1968. They were researching and conducting experiments about the effect, following the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964.[2] This effect is one of the strongest and most replicable psychological phenomenon.

Motivation

In India, there are countless incidents involving a crime/assault in public and which involve local people standing as audience, rather than helping the victim. One such incident is witnessed in Guwahati, in July 2012. A young woman was sexually assaulted in public. From the video footage and eye witness reports, it was cleat that there were many people who were in position of helping the woman but didn't helped.[3]

We chose this topic to educate people about this effect,and to understand the mentality of people about this effect and how one can avoid falling victim to this effect.

Past Studies and surveys

Many aspects of Bystander effect are well researched and these results are backed up by many surveys. As to answer why this effect occurs, some possible causes include– ambiguity, cohesiveness , diffusion of responsibility.

Ambiguity: A person is more likely to help a victim, if he understands the situation quickly. As an example, suppose a person falls from a bicycle, a passerby may overlook him, considering this situation as non-serious. However, if the person who fell from the bicycle is shouting for help, a passerby consider this situation as an emergency may respond fast. Thus a sense of emergency encourages people to help other people.

Cohesiveness: Cohesiveness may be defined as established relationship between people. This relationship may be friendship, acquaintance, etc. According to a survey done by Mark and Simon, in 2008, cohesiveness affects how a person respond to such situations. A high cohesive group of people is more likely to help than a low cohesive group of people.[4]

Diffusion of responsibility: Darley and Latane, conducted research on diffusion of responsibility. The research suggests that, when there are more people around in case of emergency, the people believe that someone else will take responsibility. Thus the sense of responsibility is diffused. This is one of the main cause of Bystander Effect.[5]

Approach:

To understand this effect and mentality of people in such situations, we conducted a survey in our Institute campus. 40 people participated in our survey, out of which 38 were male participants. We conclude the following results from our survey.

Survey results

1. Cohesiveness and membership:

The participants were asked whether they prefer to help a person when they are alone or when they are with their close friends.

Result 1 - Cohesiveness and membership 

The result was inconclusive, as equal number of participants prefer to help when alone and same number of participants prefer to help in group. However, few people change their preference of help when in group.

2. Response in different situations.

The participants were asked whether they prefer to save a person who is getting sexually assaulted and/or physically assaulted and/or robbed.

Result 2 - Response in different situations

As the results show, People are more likely help a sexual assault victim over a physical assault victim. In this result, we see that the less ambiguous the situation, the more likely people are to help. A physically assault can be interpreted wrongly, but robbery and sexual assault are clearly emergency situations.

3. Gender Biasing

Participants were asked about whether they will preferably help a male physical assault victim , the assaulter being a female or a female physical assault victim, assaulter being a male.

Result 3 - Bystander Effect and gender

The result shows that a female victim will be saved preferably over a male victim. In the graph, 12 participants responded that they will bystanders for males only. 5 participants will not help both males and females. No participant wants to be a bystander only for females. However, some responses also include that the participant want to know the reason behind this physical beating.

4. Parental teaching to encourage helping

Finally we asked our participants if they were encouraged to help people by their parents, and whether they will encourage their children to help other people.

Cat 1 - Participants were encouraged to help by their parents.

Cat 2 - Participants will encourage their children to help others.

Result 4 - Parental Teaching for helping others.

The result was favorable that more people want to encourage their children to be a helper than a bystander.

Conclusion:

From our survey and the materials we read, we found that, in general, people are likely to help other people. However, under different circumstances their responses vary from being helpful to being a bystander. Since there were very few females who were part of this survey, so this survey can't give genuine answer about opinions of particular gender about this effect.

Also, this survey was conducted only on students of our Institute, so the results could have been different than the opinion of local people.

For future work on this topic, we would like to work on educating more people about this effect and find possible courses of actions in case of emergencies.

References:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

[3] http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/07/13/guwahati-shows-we-are-a-nation-of-bystanders/

[4] Mark Levine and Simon Crowther (2008). "The Responsive Bystander: How Social Group, Membership and Group Size can encourage as well as Inhibit Bystander Intervention." Journal of   Personality and Social Psychology.

[5] J.M. Darley and B. Latane (1968), "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility." Journal of   Personality and Social Psychology.

Conformity on Stereotypes and Prejudices

Team - Himanth Nersu, Santhosh A, Satya Abhiram Theli

Introduction:

• Conformity involves changing your behaviors in order to "fit in" or "go along" with the people around you. Examples of conformity are readily observable in almost every activities. A 20-year-old college student drinks at a sorority party because all his friends are doing it and he does not want to be the odd one out. Another example in the corporate world be the office attire. A popular survey conducted in 2011 found that roughly 15 percent of employers plan to relax their dress codes. While some employers are implementing casual work environments, many employers conform to traditional dress codes such as those found in banks, law offices and other professional services firms.
• If your answer to the question "Do whites have a better chance of winning the US elections?" is "Yes", then it is a perfect example of Stereotyping. Stereotypes are assumptions made about a group of people and are applied to individuals irrespective of their personal characteristics because of their affiliation with said group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but no matter the type, it's important to use extreme caution around stereotypes, especially in the workplace.
• Prejudice is usually referred to as a negative attitude, especially when it is a hatred towards certain kinds of people. Some common examples are: In the United States, black people could not sit in the front of buses or use the same water fountains as white people until the 1950s and 1960s; Assumptions that someone who is physically disabled is also mentally disabled; Reluctance of parents to approve their children marrying anyone of a different religion. 

Motivation:

• Stereotyping and Prejudicing are pretty much similar in their own terms and occur mostly because of social influence.
• In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as "normal" by the group.
• This motivated us to the study of effects of conformity on Stereotyping and Prejudicing nature of people.

Approach:

• We did a questionnaire survey on IIT Patna student community to study the effects of conformity.
• The questions revolved around gender/religious/racial profiling. The questions were framed to assess the stereotyping and prejudicing nature of the people who took the survey.
• One set (A) of people were told about previous responses of the same survey. These responses were purposefully framed to make-believe the people of A that a vast majority (or the minority, in few questions) of the people hold negative stereotypes or prejudices.
• Another set (B) of people were asked the questions directly.

Survey Responses:

The analyses in better resolution can be found here.

Conclusion:

• The responses from set B were found to be in accordance with the information about the previous survey.
• More people from set B tend to show stronger stereotyping and prejudicing behavior than set A
• This shows the influence of conformity on peoples’ social behavior.
• A vast percentage of people discriminate only as a result of social influence.
• A possible reason for this can be that people who are high in the desire for control are less likely to conform than people low in the desire for control due to their feeling that they will be relinquishing control over events in their lives if they conform.

A STUDY ON HOMESICKNESS - Based on a survey among the students of IIT Patna

Team members:  Sreenivasu K, Vidyadutt K, Udhaya Shankar J.S, Balakumaran N 

1.Introduction

Although the meaning of homesickness is trivial, it has a deeper meaning on a closer look.

It not just refers to distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home but also to the anxious and a consequently withdrawal behavior as a result of preoccupying thoughts of home and attachment objects.  It leads to difficulty on focusing on topics unrelated to home. It may refer to a state of unhappiness when things are different to one’s expectations. Sufferers of such a psychological phenomenon feel they have no control over their environment. However it should be understood that such a phenomenon is a universal experience. It can affect anyone living away from home temporarily or permanently irrespective of one’s gender, nationality and personality type.

Previous researches have categorized Homesickness into two forms based on the intensity of symptoms.

They are namely, Traditional Homesickness and Intense Homesickness.

Traditional Homesickness:

• ·      Less intense, comes quite often and eventually drifts away after a few weeks.
• ·         Sufferers find it distressing, however their social and academic functions are not disturbed. 

Intense Homesickness:

• ·          Persists continuously even after months
• ·         Sufferers are disturbed continuously thereby hampering social and academic functions.

It is also important to understand the following findings of the previously done researches.

• ·         35 percent of beginning university students experience homesickness
• ·         For every 7 students who suffer from traditional homesickness, there might be 1 student who suffers from severe homesickness
• ·         Between 5 and 15 percent of beginning students suffer from this in a more severe form.

 2. Survey Methodology :

The objective of the survey is to study different aspects associated with homesickness among the students of IIT Patna right from the age of first homesick experience to the individual personality types of the sufferers.

Keeping the above objective in mind, a survey form in Google-docs has been prepared as it proves to be an efficient and a tech-savvy method of data collection. The survey form intends to extract the following details from a person filling it.

•     Gender
•    Time of first hostel experience
•    Levels of first homesick experience after certain time intervals
•   Personal  issues

-          The person(s) at home the sufferers missed the most

-          Whether the sufferers had previous relationships.(before joining hostels)

-          Attempts made to combat the initial setback

A.      Overall experience

-          Their feelings to be rated on a 5 point scale

-          Whether they would recommend such experience to others

B.      Personality type

-          Whether the person is an introvert, extrovert, ambivert or reserved

In the survey, it is assumed that the participants have enough knowledge of their own personality types.

This eliminated the need to conduct separate tests so as to find out each and everyone’s personality types which otherwise would have made the procedure a bit complex.

The survey is not aimed to collect obvious data but to infer various connections between the aspects associated to homesickness. For example, gender of the participant is related to the gender of the person whom they missed during the homesick experience. This follows that boys missed their mothers and girls missed their fathers.  Many such inferences are listed in the following sections.

On the whole, 202 participants took part in the survey, out of which, 93.5% were males and 6.5% were females. This ratio ensures that the collection of samples represent the entire scenario of IIT Patna in a nutshell.

3. Findings

3.1 First homesick experience:

          63.2% of participants reported that the first homesick experience in their life was after joining IIT Patna. The next junk of participants, 25.4 % had such experience during their high school – Standard X to Standard XII. A few of them, 8.5 %, are forerunners in having such experience as they faced it in a relatively young age during mid-school of standard V – standard X.

The intervals of suffering from homesickness are fixed to be as follows.

1.    Initial few days of sickness
2. Feeling sick after a month
3.  Feeling sick even after spending six months in the hostel

It can be inferred that only 26 participants missed their homes throughout as they reported persistence in being sick. It is interesting to note that people miss home even after spending 6 months at hostels just as they miss during the initial days.  

The majority of the participants can now be easily categorized.

A.      People who missed initially but not later

B.      People who initially did not miss but terribly missed later

Category A reports 92 people and category B reports 91 people. Both the categories have almost equal share.

3.2 Attempts to cope up with homesickness:

 Many students who had first homesick experience after joining college had access to home through phones as 92.5 % said they had permission to make calls.

Thanks to the advancement of tel-communications, 41 %  of the participants reported that they call home frequently to cope up with homesickness. The scenario would have been entirely different had the restriction been imposed on allowing mobile phones in hostels.  However it is also interesting to note that 12.5 % of people were very determined before joining hostels. They reported, ”Chuck home! I came here to study.” 4 % said they maintained diary to jot down their feelings or they used to express their feeling of longing by creative means such as painting, writing poetry etc.

Only 2 % of people wrote letters / e –mails to cope up with homesickness. The remaining 22.5 % carried out other ways of coping up.

It is interesting to relate the attempts to cope up with homesickness to the age group during which the sufferers had first experience. People who had first experience during standard X- standard XII are the most determined ones as they reported , ”Chuck home ! I came here to study.” as equal as the ones who made frequent calls to home. Many of them reported to have kept dreaming about their homes irrespective of when they had first experience. Also, 60 % said they continued doing the attempts to cope up with homesickness after one month of stay in the hostel.

It can be concluded that calling home frequently has proven to be the successful attempt to cope up with homesickness, whereas dreaming about home during class or while studying stands next.

3.3 Recommending hostel experience:

  

 87.1 % of people said they would recommend hostel experience to any of their juniors (such as brother(s), sister(s), cousins juniors at school etc.). It is also inferred that only people who reported, “Oh !! Horrible it was… distressing…..uffo !!  East or west home is the best.” did not recommend having hostel experience to their juniors. Others fairly recommended having such hostel experience. Majority of those who recommended said, “Felt bad initially, but I made friends then after and started enjoying”.

Also, people who had first experience of staying in hostel after joining college suggested that their juniors should experience the life at hostels. However, the ones who had the first encounter during kindergarten did not recommend such experience to their juniors.

3.4 Personal issues:

65.2% missed their mom when they felt homesick. Dad stands next in the family as he is reported to have missed by just 16.2% of the participants. Siblings, on the other hand prove their significance at home by having a share of 8.1% . Best friends stand next to siblings with 6.5% of reporters. 

Here it is interesting to infer that boys missed their moms and girls missed their dads, irrespective of when they had first homesick experience.   Overall, this makes us conclude that motherly care is what is missed by everyone staying away from home. 17.9% said they were in a relationship before joining hostel. Majority denied that they were not in any relationship before. The interesting fact here is that 69.4%  of people still missed their homes even though they were in a relationship. It goes to prove that no matter whether the person is in a relationship or not, he/she still remains homesick when away from home. So, relationship cannot be a stimulus that could reduce homesickness.

3.5 Personality types:

It is intriguing to relate the personality types of participants to various aspects of homesickness.

We have considered extroverts, introverts, ambiverts and the reserved ones in our study samples.

As ambiverts show a mixture of activities that reflect both intro and extroverted traits we throw light purely on the extroverted, introverted and the reserved ones. It is observed that a total of 37 introverts, 30 extroverts and 18 reserved ones took part in the survey. Rest of them were ambiverts.

Calling home frequently as an attempt to cope up with homesickness remains intact to both extroverts and introverts as both the types report  the same share of 46 % . But, introverts are more determined in saying, ”Chuck home ! I came here to study.” with a count of 14 % in their side. Extroverts reported only 10 % in the case.  The same reflects when both were asked to rate their hostel life experience.

18.9 % of introverts say ,” I never felt because I had strongly made up my mind before going to hostel. So, It didn’t strike me so hard.”  16.6 % of reserved ones said the same standing next to introverts in determination.  Whereas, only 6.6 % of extroverts said so.

However, 40 % extroverts ,by virtue of their nature said,” Felt bad initially, but I made friends then after and started enjoying”. 37 % of  introverts on the other hand said so. In this analysis, reserved ones seem to be the sufferers as only 27 % them seemed to enjoy after joining the hostel.

Again, true to their nature, 16.6 % extroverts reported,” I made friends on my very first day at hostel. In fact, that whole experience was wonderful, I still miss those hostel days ! Nostalgic.” 

Only 8 % of introverts reported that they made friends on the very first day at hostel.

6.6 % of extroverts said,” Oh !! Horrible it was… distressing…..uffo !!  East or west home is the best.” regarding their first experience at hostel. Whereas 18.9 %  introverts and 16.6 % reserved ones said it was a distressing experience.

So, this leads us to the following conclusions on relating personality types to homesickness.

•  Introverts are more determined when it comes to staying at a place away from home.
•  Extroverts don’t find their hostel experience to be a distressing one.
• Calling home frequently as an attempt to cope up with homesickness seems to be significant irrespective of the nature of a person suffering from it.

Disappointments in Sporting Competitions, its Consequences and Resolutions

Team Meambers:Mayank Chakarwarti,Abhishek Kumar,Prakhar Kothari,Vignesh Vasudevan

Stuff happens. All athletes face disappointing moments during their athletic career. And that’s okay. How to deal with disappointment is what truly matters most. That’s where you either turn the event into a lesson or a loss.
We’ve all had our fair share of disappointments, ranging from small to significant. I’ve noticed a particular type of athlete that’s more prone to magnifying a defeat.  It’s the naturally gifted athlete. Maybe you’re nodding your head in agreement.
Gifted athletes that easily cruise to the top miss out on important life skills. There’s a downside to drifting through training and always being the best. They lack resilience which is developed by facing adversity.

Disappointment is the feeling of dissatisfaction that follows the failure of expectations or hopes to manifest. Similar to regret, it differs in that a person feeling regret focuses primarily on the personal choices that contributed to a poor outcome, while a person feeling disappointment focuses on the outcome itself. It is a source of psychological stress.The study of disappointment—its causes, impact, and the degree to which individual decisions are motivated by a desire to avoid it—is a focus in the field of decision analysis, as disappointment is one of two primary emotions involved in decision-making.

 Methodology:-

To study the impact of Disappointment we conducted a survey in our own campus.This survey was done to see how undergraduate face and overcome the challenges faced by Sporting Disappointment.. Total of 12 questions were sent to the participants .It consists of information related to their level of game,reason of participation,most disappointing moment etc. A total of 65 responses have been received.

Results:-

Conclusion:

       Feelings Experienced after a setback/loss by Sportsperson who are passionate about game .

                         Ways to cope with disappointing situation for passionate person

                 Behavior of Passionate Sportsperson with respect to propagating the game

• Being passionate about the game is biggest reason for participation in sporting activities. 70% of the respondents have reinstated this statement. 
• As most of the people who took this survey were passionate for the game they pursue, this study emphasizes on the way they conduct themselves after a loss or a setback. 
• 85% of passionate sports-persons have been a part of college team at some point of time.
• 60%  (majority) of the passionate players feel determined and motivated to do better next time after facing a loss or a setback. 22% of them respond by being frustrated or angry probably because their efforts have not been rewarded.
• 84% of the players cope with this situation by practicing hard in order to produce better results.

The most disappointing events encountered by the sports-persons are as follows:

• Lack of facilities – 21.8%
• Ending up on the losing side after a close encounter – 18.7%
• Heavy defeat – 17 %
• Incompetence of team – 16%

• 59% of the respondents feel that their attitude towards coping with a disappointing situation was appropriate.

• Passionate sports-persons propagate their game irrespective of the outcome and other obstacles involved.

• Sports-persons who are not passionate do not change anything about themselves after facing a loss.
• 22% said it doesn't effect on their studies.

Stress in Students Life - Stress Levels and Coping Mechanisms

Team Members - Jayshri Totewad, V. Tejaswini, V. Sneha

College students experience the stresses and strains of living in today’s world. They constantly face new situations where the outcome is often uncertain. Their sense of self-esteem and well-being is challenged by problems and time constraint for everything. The principle objective of this study is to determine what sources of stress are prevalent among undergraduate students, and to examine the nature of these stressors. Also we wanted to know how well students cope with their stress and to know about their coping techniques.

Most people encounter stress that lead them to rapid bodily changes such as feelings of emotional unrest causing the body strains with body aches. With repeated stressful situations, causes tension and pressures on the body that contribute to physical and psychological problems. When stress in college students is not dealt with effectively, they feel lonely and nervous with excessive worrying due to failure to cope with their negative feelings. Intra-personal, Inter-personal, academic and environmental stressors play major role in student’s life.

Relevant Studies:-

The National College Health Assessment of the American College Health Association Report (2001) revealed that during the year 2000, 76% of students felt overwhelmed and 22% were unable to function as a result of depression.

Presnall (2008) conducted the Student Stress Survey that showed the college students having high stress on school related issues some of them affecting their emotional and mental health. Furthermore, the survey polled 2,253 undergraduate students aged 18 to 24 randomly selected from schools nationwide and revealed that the primary sources of stress were financial problems, relationship, family problems, and extracurricular activities. Students used alcohol drinking, drugs and going out with friends as their immediate solutions. In this study, the most common forms of stress that students face were to get good grades, having to juggle school work with other responsibilities, making a decision about future career choice, and developing a variety of new interpersonal relationships.

Methodology:-

Participants

The population of this study consisted of the students enrolled in various Undergraduate programs in IIT. The sample was a random group of students belonging to the batches 2014, 2013, 2012 and mostly from 2011. A group of 104 students participated in the study on a voluntary basis. This sample included 56.73% males (N=59) and 43.27% females (N=45).

Data Analysis and Statistics

A questionnaire consisting of 13 questions was sent out to the participants. It consists of information related to gender, questions related to stressors, stress behavior and its effectiveness.

Various types of stressors, stress behavior are represented using frequency and percentage for each item. The classes of frequency being the five points: Highly Stressed, above average, Average, Slight Stress, No Stress. Multiple coping techniques can be chosen by a student. Likeliness to work under stress and personal level of stress are scaled from 1 to 5. Also if students are satisfied with their coping techniques is also studied on a scale of 1 to 5.

Results:-

Out of the total sample space (N=104) 59 respondents were male and 45 were female. The following shows the various statistics that were measured:

The various stressors among students are in the order Career plans (18%), Academics (17%), financial problems (15%), Relationships (14%), Family Responsibilities (13%), Health (12%) and extra-circulars (10%). These distribution of responses can be categorized under 28% of the stressors were interpersonal (includes roommate conflicts, relationship with boyfriend/girlfriend), 37% intra-personal (includes changes in sleeping habits, new responsibilities in Departments/Clubs, Financial problems) and 35% academics (include grades, assignment submissions, quizzes).

The results of these stressors on students’ shows positive results as most of them are showing interest and gaining motivation under stress. Also negative effects like nervousness, irritation, depression and fatigue are also prevalent among them. These stressors show strong emotional effect on students.

Majority students try to find solutions to break the stress and in unavoidable cases they divert their concentration.

Conclusion:-

1) Primary Source of stress in student's life is Academics and Career.

2) Due to stress, most of the students showed interest or motivation to complete the task.

Other major behavioral changes that are observed are depression, irritation and nervousness.

3) Coping mechanisms for most of the students include chat with friends, watching TV or movies and taking a nap. Few students have also mentioned their coping mechanisms as smoking and drinking alcohol which are injurious to health.

4) Male students are likely to work more under stress compared to female students.

5) Most of the students are comfortable with their stress levels although few reported to have high stress levels.

6) Most of the students are satisfied with their own mechanisms to fight stress. Few suggested that college administrators should consider incorporating stress management workshops specific to the needs of the college students.

Limitations:-

1) This study is limited to only premiere institutions and also sample data may not be enough to come to a strong conclusion.

2) Responses given by students may or may not be true.