School Demands and Coping Resources-Associations with Multiple Measures of Stress in Mid-Adolescent Girls and Boys.

Viveca Östberg,Stephanie Plenty,Petra Lindfors,Sara Låftman,Bitte Modin

doi:10.3390/ijerph15102143

Abstract

Stress, and stress-related health complaints, are common among young people, especially girls. Since studies have shown that school demands are an important driver of stress in adolescents, identifying if school-based resources can protect against stress is highly relevant. The aim of this study was to analyse task-related demands and task-related coping resources as aspects of the school work environment of potential relevance for stress in mid-adolescent girls and boys. The data came from “The School Stress and Support study” (TriSSS) conducted among students in grades 8 and 9 (aged 14–16 years). Self-reports of demands, coping resources, stress, as well as recurrent pain, were collected through questionnaires (n = 411). A subsample of students (n = 191–198) also provided salivary samples, which were analysed for the stress marker cortisol. Linear (OLS) and binary logistic regression analyses showed that higher demands were associated with more perceived stress, a higher likelihood of recurrent pain, and a lower cortisol awakening response. Greater coping resources were associated with less perceived stress and a lower likelihood of recurrent pain, but there was no association with cortisol. The strength of the associations differed by gender. The findings suggest that schools can promote student wellbeing by providing clear and timely information and teacher support to the students, especially for boys. Identifying specific features of the schoolwork that give rise to stress and to modify these accordingly is also of importance, especially for girls.

Highlights

Stress is commonly defined as the imbalance between stressors, i.e., experienced demands or challenges, and an individual’s capacity to deal with these [1]
The present study focused on task-related school demands and key resources for coping with these demands in order to examine whether such resources can protect against stress in students
Girls had greater stress than boys according to all five stress-related measures: Pressure, activation, recurrent pain, and cortisol output in terms of lnAUCG and lnCARG

Summary

Introduction

Stress is commonly defined as the imbalance between stressors, i.e., experienced demands or challenges, and an individual’s capacity to deal with these [1]. Whether or not demands or challenges do act as stressors depends on the individual’s interpretation [1,2], as well as on available coping resources [3]. A large share of adolescents in Western countries, especially girls, report high levels of stress-related health complaints [5,6]. Numerous studies have identified school demands as an important driver of stress among adolescents [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], with health implications among girls [16]. Investigating the potential of school-based resources to counteract stress at school is highly relevant

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Conclusion