The Interest and Stress Level Among Fast-Track Architecture Students in UiTM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37134/ajatel.vol15.1.1.2025Keywords:
Architecture education, fast-track, student interest, stress levelAbstract
Boosting students’ disciplinary interest has long been considered an important mechanism to increase student success and retention in architecture education. However, despite this strong interest in the field, architecture is one of the education courses contributing significantly to high rates of mental health issues. According to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) educational statistics for 2021/2022, about 4% of architecture students have disclosed stress issue. Therefore, this study aims to identify the level of interest among architecture students and their corresponding stress levels. 310 fast-track architecture students from Universiti Teknologi MARA participated in the study by answering a distributed questionnaire. The findings indicate that fast-track architecture students exhibit a high average mean score in both interest level (M= 4.16) and stress level (M=3.69). For interest levels, there is a statistically significant difference across the different years of study (p-value < .001), but no significant difference based on the type of financial resources during study or family socio-economic status. Regarding stress levels, there are statistically significant differences across the different years of study (p-value = .003) and financial resources during study (p-value = .005) but not based on family socio-economic status. Spearman’s rho test revealed there are a relationship between interest level and stress level among fast-track architecture students. The study findings support the use of the instrument to gain a broad understanding of students’ individual interest and stress levels. With minor adaptations, the instrument could also be evaluated for use in other architecture disciplines and for use by other populations.
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