Mental Health Implications of the Quarter System: An Analysis of Student Experiences at Tertiary Institutions in Zimbabwe
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study investigated the mental health implications of the quarter system on students at Midlands State University, Gweru Campus, Zimbabwe. The primary objective was to assess how this academic structure impacts the students’ mental health and formulate strategies that can mitigate the associated challenges. Utilizing a pragmatic paradigm and a mixed methods approach, the researchers employed a convergent parallel design, analyzing quantitative data from 84 respondents and qualitative insights from 20 participants from the Psychology department. Random sampling was used for quantitative data collection, while purposive sampling was applied for qualitative insights. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including frequency analysis and means, while qualitative data were thematically analyzed to identify recurring themes related to academic stress and supportive strategies. Findings revealed high levels of stress, anxiety, and feelings of being overwhelmed, particularly during the second and fourth quarters, which students perceived as more intense and shorter than the first and third quarters. The requirement to sit for exams twice a semester contributed significantly to academic pressure, leading students to focus primarily on passing rather than mastering content. Participants expressed that the quarter system hindered their ability to manage stress, because of tight deadlines, heavy workloads, and limited flexibility exacerbating academic anxiety. Limited breaks and insufficient time for reflection further intensified their challenges. Overall, the study highlights the detrimental effects of the quarter system on student mental health, aligning with similar findings in global contexts, and underscores the need for supportive measures to enhance student well-being. The study suggested for regular campus-wide wellness events, extension of semester breaks to two weeks and quarter-specific stress management programmes that not only addresses issues as they arise but also educates students on effective coping strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".