The Correlation between Chocolate Consumption Behaviors and Stress Levels in Secondary School Students in Bangkok Metropolitan Region

Abstract

Chocolate has shown to be linked with stress relief, better memory, and better mood in some reports. Also, chocolate consumption is one of the popular food indulgences in Thailand. Thus, this survey research aims to investigate the correlation between chocolate consumption behaviors and stress levels in secondary school students in the Bangkok metropolitan region. We also try to observe the habits of consuming chocolate in Thai secondary school students and how this consumption of chocolate will be related to stress levels. We collected a sample group voluntarily by using online questionnaires, which obtained a total of 335 participants. The questions were assessed on a Likert-scale from 1 to 5 and were then analyzed by valid percentages, mean, standard deviation, one-way ANOVA(F-test), and the Pearson correlation. The results of the study reveal that chocolate consumption has a significant role in stress reduction among secondary school students; however, the R-value of 0.284 in this study is quite low, which indicates a slight correlation between chocolate consumption and stress levels. Focusing on each gender, it is evident that females tend to have more stress than males. Also, we observed that different grades have different stress levels. This study could be further improved by expanding the age demographic of the participants to not only cover teenagers but also by increasing the radius of the survey region to cover more people. Nevertheless, this research suggests that consuming chocolate could be an option in relieving stress.