Evaluation of the Effect of a Live Interview in Journalism Students on Salivary Stress Biomarkers and Conventional Stress Scales.

Delfina Roca,Damián Escribano,Asta Tvarijonaviciute,Pedro A Rojo-Villada,Lorena Franco-Martínez,Jose J Ceron,Silvia Martínez-Subiela,Luis J Bernal,Maria D Contreras-Aguilar

doi:10.3390/ijerph19041920

Delfina Roca, Damián Escribano + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041920

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Abstract

A career in journalism can be very stressful, as journalists frequently have to deal with uncontrolled situations such as conducting live interviews. Therefore, training is essential during their career, both for the development of communication skills and for the improvement of the real and effective capacity to perform the tasks of their professional activity. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of stress in students before and after a practical training in a professional television set using subjective (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Likert scale) and objective (salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase) methods. The results indicate that a live interview produces stress in the students as revealed by increased concentrations of cortisol and alpha amylase in saliva. Furthermore, students with lower initial concentrations of these biomarkers obtained better grades in evaluation, suggesting that greater control of anticipatory stress could be associated with a better activity performance.

Highlights

Journalists usually feel high levels of stress as, in many cases, they must be exposed to the public during the performance of interviews and live shows
We evaluated the two different components that are involved in the stress response: the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)
It can be concluded that in our experimental conditions, a practice consisting of a live interview produced an increase in cortisol and alpha amylase in the students that would indicate increased stress

Summary

Introduction

Journalists usually feel high levels of stress as, in many cases, they must be exposed to the public during the performance of interviews and live shows. Professional skills acquired during a journalism career, either through practical subjects taken at university or through internships carried out in companies, must effectively shape a graduate profile adjusted to the demand of professionals in this field. This would be the ideal situation, but currently journalism degrees tend to focus on theoretical rather than practical subjects [3]. Different authors emphasize that journalism is learned by practising it, ideally in environments similar to those in which the professional practice will be developed [4,5,6] This is because not all journalism students have innate communication skills for this profession’s performance. The acquisition of communication skills includes gathering all verbal and non-verbal factors required in human communication, linked with the appropriate way of using them according to the situation in order to develop effective oral and corporal expression through

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