Exploring Students' Perspectives of Social factors in Academic Stress Experience

This study examines the impact of effective social factors on students' academic stress. An attempt has been made to focus on the sources of social stress in education from the perspective of students. For this purpose, inspired by Brown and Clark (2006), a thematic analysis method to analyze the research data. The study's statistical population consists of male and female students of Qom Technical and Vocational University in the 2020-2021 academic year. A purposive sampling method has been adopted to collect the data, using the semi-structured individual interview. Based on the theoretical saturation, twenty-one students were interviewed. According to the findings of the present study there are some serious concerns about the verbal violence, psychosocial environment of classrooms, unfair comparison of students with each other, procrastination, social anxiety, family tensions, multiplicity, expectations, and lack of a sense of self-efficacy as sources of academic stress in the social environment of the classroom that can considerably intensify academic stress.