<![CDATA[Academic stress is a common psychological challenge among high school students which may affect their psychological well-being and academics. In terms of positive psychology, gratitude journaling has been suggested as a tool which would allow people to cope with academic pressure better. Thus, the purpose of the current research was to find out the impact of gratitude journaling on the academic stress of high school students. A quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest control group was used, and 67 participants aged about 17 years old were recruited via a purposive sampling technique from two intact classes; 37 participants in the experimental group and 30 participants in the control group. Academic stress was assessed using the Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA). A gratitude journaling intervention was conducted for five days in the experimental group (five grateful things per day), while control group continued learning as usual. Data were analyzed using paired and independent samples t-tests in Jamovi. The results showed that the experimental group experienced a significant decrease in academic stress from pretest to posttest (t(36) = 3.15, p = .003), whereas the control group showed no significant change (t(29) = 1.30, p = .204). The posttest comparison also indicated significantly lower academic stress in the experimental group than in the control group (t(65) = −3.44, p = .001). These findings suggest that gratitude journaling is a promising, simple, and low-cost intervention for reducing academic stress among high school students, although its effectiveness warrants further confirmation through stronger experimental designs.]]>
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