Effect of Learning Styles on Self-Esteem and Stress Levels of University Students

Background: Assessment of an individual about themselves is quite important because it effects in several ways in entire life including student life. Aim: To assess the how the learning styles effects on self-esteem and stress levels of students. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out among second year, third year, fourth year and fifth year students of Psychology department of University of Karachi. All data were collected by means of interview. To determine self-esteem, Rosenberg's self-esteem scale was utilized, which is regarded as a highly reliable and valid tool for the quantitative assessment of self-esteem. The Stress Scale was used to measure the levels of perceived stress (feelings and thoughts) experienced by the participants during the past month. To examine the effect of awareness of learning styles (LS) among the students varied methods was used of learning. SPSS version 21 was used for data analysis keeping a p-value of <0.05 as statistically significant. Results: There were a total of 240 students, 87 male and 153 were females. The students belong to middle and higher standards of living status. Results indicated that majority of students have normal self-esteem with high stress levels, which indicated that self-esteem may not always affecting level of stress, but it is the situation which might be affecting the self-esteem and stress. Furthermore, we observed that learning style greatly affects the level of self-esteem as well as stress. Visual and solitary learning style is most common among students in different educational year, while majority of students prefer visual style of learning. Conclusion: Effect of learning styles on self-esteem and stress levels of students with educational year of the students was found to be significant.