Abstract
Introduction. The objective of the study was to assess the perceived stress and its severity, sources and determinants in a group of dental students from different universities in Saudi Arabia. Materials and methods. In this cross-sectional study, the perceived stress and its severity, sources, and demographic variables were studied in 677 dental students (464 males, 213 females) of Saudi Universities, who agreed to participate. The students (Ist to Vth year) were contacted to fill in the online forms. A self-administered valid and reliable questionnaire including demographic details and 27 questions based on Dental Environment Stress proforma was placed online. The questions were organized into four categories: personal and administrative, theoretical, pre-clinical, and clinical. The level of stress was calibrated from 1 to 4. The relationship between the demographic variables and students' academic performance with the investigated items was also assessed. Simple arithmetical tests were used to find out the value of the stress for different factors, while Pearson's t-test was used to find out the statistical significance of the differences based on gender and year of study (P<0.05). Results and discussion. Saudi dental students showed high levels of perceived stress. The clinical training issues imposed the highest level of stress on them. There were significant relationships between the investigated variables and the level of perceived stress recorded. Conclusions. The results of this study showed that most of the dental students had perceived stress. Female students had higher mean overall problem scores compared to males, and second-year students showed lower perceived problems compared to the other.