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Addison Rothenbush

ENC 1102H Section 202

29 March 2017

Final Draft

A Rhetorical Analysis of The prevalence and correlates of depression, anxiety and stress in a

sample of college students.

The research report The prevalence and correlates of depression, anxiety and stress in a

sample of college students studies multiple factors that contribute to depression, anxiety and

stress. This source will be very helpful in my research paper about the causes of depression in

college students because this source provides data on multiple causes. It also compares the

results of each cause to show which ones have the most impact on depression. This will help me

choose which causes I want to focus on in my paper by finding out which causes are most

influential.

The source I am choosing to analyze is a research report written by R. Beiter, R. Nash,

M. McCrady, D. Rhoades, M. Linscomb, M. Clarahan, and S. Sammut titled The prevalence

and correlates of depression, anxiety, and stress in a sample of college students. All the authors

worked at the Department of Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work at the Franciscan

University of Steubenville. They had noticed a sharp increase in the number of yearly visits to

the Franciscan University Counseling Center. They set out to determine why there was an

increase. No biases are shown for most of the report. Data is collected, presented and compared

without much analyzation for most of the report. When analyzation is provided at the end, it is

mostly about why the causes they studied have a large impact. This analyzation is based on the
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authors knowledge of college life. The results they present include raw data and are not biased,

but the analyzation may place more emphasis on the causes that the authors know more about.

My research question is what are the causes of depression in college students? This

research report answers this question in regards to the students attending Franciscan University

of Steubenville. I will examine how the problem of depression in college students was

approached in this study to determine the reports usefulness for my paper. I will consider the

results of the found correlates of depression, anxiety, and stress and decide which ones to focus

on in my paper. I will also analyze the authors discussion of treatment to compare it to other

suggestions from other sources.

This research report studies the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress in college

students as well as the causes and correlates of them since this report was published in a

psychology journal. It begins with information about how much depression, anxiety, and stress

have risen in recent years and the severity of the problem. The authors found that almost 10% of

university students in the USA have been diagnosed with or treated for depression over the past

12 months, but only about half of all Americans diagnosed with depression were treated.

According to the research report, the Franciscan University Counseling Center specifically saw

an increase in the prevalence of depression when their number of clients with depression almost

doubled between the 2007-08 and 2012-13 school years. The report then outlines the process for

collecting data and includes analysis of the data. The report concludes that some of the top

concerns were academic performance, pressure to succeed, and post-graduation plans. The most

concerning groups demographically were transfers, upperclassmen, and students living off-

campus.
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The intended audience of this piece is most likely other psychologists who are attempting

to tackle the issue of depression in college students. The authors main point is that there are

specific challenges of daily life that correspond to depression, anxiety and stress. One

assumption that the authors appear to have made was that the causes of stress are the same as or

similar to the causes of depression and anxiety. The main appeals made in this source are appeals

to reason. Statistical data was collected and analyzed throughout the paper. The data was

collected in a way that allowed it to be converted into numerical data and analyzed as such. A

small appeal to emotion is used at the beginning of the text when the authors talk about the

mental health problems plaguing their students. The explanation by the authors of the

difficulties that people suffering from depression face and how infrequently they are able to get

the help they need appeals to emotion by causing the audience to feel sympathy for the people

with depression. However, this section is still written with an analyzing and scientific tone that

causes it to convey less emotion than this topic would otherwise.

The text is organized in the order that the data was gathered and analyzed. After the

abstract and keywords, the Introduction provides background on not only depression, anxiety,

and stress in general, but also the specific situation at the Franciscan University Counseling

Center. This includes statistics about depression in the United States as well as mentioning some

of the struggles that people face today relating to depression, anxiety, and stress. Next, the

Methods section explained how participants were gathered and what kinds of survey they

received. The participants were all college students at Franciscan University. They were from

multiple disciplines, demographic groups, and living areas. The gender distribution of these

participants was similar to the gender distribution of the university. In addition, the percentage of

participants in each grade was almost evenly distributed. These participants were also
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purposefully chosen from multiple majors to increase diversity in the group and more accurately

represent the university student body. The Results section followed and was further broken into

subsections based on the multiple groups that could be separately analyzed within the entire

group. These included demographics, DASS 21 rankings, upperclassmen, off-campus students,

sex differences, and transfer students. Since the whole group was broken into smaller groups, the

authors were able to isolate transfer students, upperclassmen, and students living off-campus as

the most depressed, anxious, and stressed. The next section was Discussion, in which the authors

analyzed their results. This section discussed why the statistically most stressful areas are

important to college students. The top 10 sources that caused the most concern among college

students were academic performance, pressure to succeed, post-graduation plans, financial

concerns, quality of sleep, relationship with friends, relationship with family, overall health,

body image, and self-esteem (section 3.2). Since other studies of depression may not focus on

these exact same causes, I will categorize they causes into pressure to succeed, relationships, and

personal wellbeing and health. These broader categories will allow me to find more data about

depression. The results were also compared to results of previous studies done about college

students. These studies had similar results, therefore supporting the results of this study. This

section also voiced the concerns of the authors about the growing problem of depression, anxiety,

and stress in college students. The authors encouraged other universities to complete their own

studies to be able to help their students. The authors also recommend increases in treatment and

prevention programs to provide the help that students need. If universities monitor and provide

more assistance to their students, they will learn more about the struggles that their students face

and will be better able to help. The final research section was about the limitations of the study.

The authors mentioned a fault in one of their questions that caused it to be less comparable.
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Throughout the report, the authors make sure not to confuse fact and opinion, even when

making an emotional appeal. The emotional appeal is based solely on evidence of the negative

effects of depression, anxiety, and stress. The suggestions in the discussion are also based on

evidence and not opinion. While this topic is an emotional one, the authors remain professional

and analytical. This research report does not include counterarguments as it is only analyzing the

data collected by the authors themselves. This research was conducted in response to the authors

concern about the rising rate of depression at their university.

The visual elements of this report included pie charts and bar graphs to show how the

scores from the survey compared to each other. These visual elements are very persuasive and

make a logical appeal. They are well organized and are able to show correlation between data

points. What the visuals show best are the gaps between different groups in terms of their scores.

The authors tone throughout this paper is professional and scientific. While there is an

emotional appeal in the beginning, the parts of the report than present the data and analyze it

have no emotion. Even throughout the discussion, the writing is logical and analytical. This tone

if very appropriate for this piece of writing. Since the main purpose of this report is the

presentation and discussion of data from research, it should be professional.

This source will be very beneficial to my research project. It is a primary source that

provides clear data regarding depression in college students. I can use the data regarding the

percentages of who gave certain answers to support that the causes I choose to focus on are

considered influential by students with depression. The bar graph showing the top 10 areas of

concern can be used in my paper. Many of the results from this study can be easily categorized

into three groups of concerns for me to focus on: pressure to succeed, relationships, and personal

wellbeing. This provides me with specific areas in which I can further my research. This source
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also provides background information on depression that I can use in my paper. Like many

sources, these authors recommend an increase in the number of programs in place to help

struggling students. However, these authors also suggest an increase in the scope of these

programs and additional studies of the students in order to better understand them and find the

best way to help them.

Work Cited
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Beiter, R., R. Nash, M. Mccrady, D. Rhoades, M. Linscomb, M. Clarahan, and S. Sammut. "The

Prevalence and Correlates of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in a Sample of College

Students." Journal of Affective Disorders 173 (2015): 90-96. Web. Accessed 08 March

2017