The relationship between stress and attitudes toward leisure among first-year medical students

The purpose of the study reported in this article was to examine first-year medical students’ attitudes toward their free time and how these attitudes relate to self-reported stress levels. Members of the entering class of 1982-83 at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine were asked to complete surveys designed to measure perceived stress and leisure attitudes. The results indicated a significant negative correlation between the total leisure scale and the stress scale. This correlation supported the hypothesis that students who perceived that they had high stress levels scored low on the leisure attitude scale. These findings suggest a need for educating students about the benefits of well spent leisure time as a stress management mechanism that is important in coping with daily pressures and anxieties.