Background: Students living in hostel face many difficulties and hurdles such as financial crisis, adjustment issues, personal helplessness, distress, changes in eating and sleep habits and many other issues. Objective: To assess the level of stress and related factors leading to stress among the students of hostel accommodation in selected residential schools. Methodology: A descriptive study was conducted to explore the stress and related factors among the students of hostel accommodation of selected residential schools at Hubballi, Karnataka. Totally 45 hostel students were selected by non-probability convenient sampling technique. The level of stress and related factors were assessed by structured stress assessment scale. Results: The study result reveal that highest mean stress score of 46.66% was obtained in the area of interpersonal relationship in hostel, 45.42% score in academic stress, 43.06 % of stress related to hostel environment and the lowest mean stress score 25.50% was found in the area of hostel policy. The combined mean stress score found to be 44.26 per cent. In relation to level of sterss15 (33.33%) were having Mild stress, 29(64.40%) were having moderate stress and 01(02.22%) were having severe stress. With regard to the significance of the association between the level of stress with their selected personal variables; age, distance of hostel from residence, family income and duration of stay in hostel were found significant at 0.05 levels. Conclusion: The study findings concluded that the majority of hostel students of residential schools were had moderate level stress.

Keywords: Level of Stress; Hostel Students; Residential Schools.