Behavioral Responses of Children to Stress

Abstract

The behavior a child adopts in response to stress may be viewed on a continuum from adaptive, effective coping behaviors to extreme maladaptive efforts to meet stressful demands. In order to assess children's behavioral responses to stress, a behavior rating scale was developed - the Stress Response Scale (SRS). The purpose of this study was to gather SRS data on a population of Egyptian children, so that we might examine differences between them and their US counterparts in terms of the typical behavioral responses to stress they might manifest. The results showed, with one exception, no significant differences between the samples as to the overall magnitude of behavioral deviance or the type of pattern manifested. The exception was found in the case of the dependent behavioral pattern. On this scale all three age groups of girls in the US sample and two of the three age groups of boys in that sample, scored significantly higher than their Egyptian cohorts.