Abstract
In many Western countries adolescents, especially girls, report high levels of stress and stress-related health complaints. In this study we investigate the concept of stress in a group of 14–15 year-olds (grade 8 in two Stockholm schools) using a multiple methods approach. The aim is to analyse stress, and gender differences in stress, as indicated by a measure of perceived stress (questionnaires, n = 212), the diurnal variation in the biomarker cortisol (saliva samples, n = 108) and the students’ own accounts of stress (semi-structured interviews, n = 49). The results were generated within the traditional framework of each method and integrated at the point of interpretation. The hypothesis that adolescent girls experience more stress than boys was confirmed by all methods used. In the questionnaire, the most commonly experienced aspects of perceived stress were the same among girls and boys, but girls consistently reported higher frequencies. The saliva samples showed that girls had greater cortisol output in the morning. In the individual semi-structured interviews, girls and boys discussed stress in similar ways but both acknowledged a gender gap to the disadvantage of girls. The results as a whole suggests an interpretation of gender differences that focuses girls’ attitudes, perceived expectations and coping strategies in relation to school performance, with their focus on achievement, marks, hard work, and worries about the future. The findings point to a need of an increased awareness about the role of perceived expectations in the stress process, and that these expectations and their impact on stress may differ by the gender of the student.
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Notes
The full questionnaire was pre-tested in a pilot study in autumn 2009 in one class in a different school.
The questionnaire contained the following subject areas: schoolwork characteristics (demands, effort, control, reward, teacher support); school performance (marks the previous term in the core subjects, satisfaction with school performance and marks); social relations (friendship quality, social support from same-aged peers, experience of various types of harassment and involvement in bullying, school class climate); stress scale; global self-esteem scale; self-rated health and health complaints (i.e. psychological, somatic and sleep complaints); health-related behaviors (e.g. smoking, moist snuff, alcohol consumption, exercise); height and weight; material and economic resources; parental relations and support; family composition and living arrangements. For social relations, the procedure of sociometric nomination was also utilized in order to visualize the patterns of social relations. All students were asked to name which three classmates they a) preferred working with, b) liked the best, and c) thought were the most popular in the class. In addition, the students were asked about their own self-perceived level of popularity. Several questions posed in the questionnaire have been used earlier in large-scale surveys (e.g. Health Behaviour in School-aged Children, The Swedish Welfare surveys for children) or are items in instruments developed and tested in earlier research (e.g. the stress scale; the global self-esteem scale), while a number of questions were developed for this study specifically.
Saliva samples can be stored at room temperature for several weeks but must be frozen if stored for longer periods. On the first day of testing participants gave one sample at each given time, while on the second day participants left two samples on each occasion. The second sample will be used to analyse another biomarker, namely alpha-amylase, reflecting functioning with a system activated during the stress process.
The interviews began with a number of background questions about where the students lived, their journey to school, and how long they had attended this particular school and been in this particular class. A peer-report method called “The Social Cognitive Map” (SCM) was used to address social relations. The purpose of SCM is to let the young people themselves identify their own group as well as other groupings in the school class (Cairns et al. 1985). In addition to the usual question: “Are there any people in your class who hang around together?”, in the present study a ‘deck of cards’ containing the names of all students in the class was used. The respondent was instructed to lay out the cards on the table according to how he/she identified the social groupings in the class. The main reasons for using the cards were, firstly, to minimise the risk of the respondent forgetting any classmates and, secondly, to make it easier for the interviewers to ask follow-up questions about the groupings. The subsequent themes of the interviews concerned these social groupings and their characteristics, the pros and cons of group membership, changeability of and conflicts within and between groups, friendships and best friends, the meaning and presence of popularity, likeability, social strategies, respect and marginalisation. The second theme was stress, and a concluding section inquired about leisure time activities.
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Acknowledgement
We are grateful to all the students who have made this study possible, and for the contribution made by parents and school staff. In addition to the research team, thanks to Victoria Blom, Anders Hjern, Roberto Riva, Tove Tullberg and Tina Ulvbane for helping out along the way. Thanks to Edvin Sandberg Frid and Johan Rehnberg for valuable research assistance. We thank Ms Ann-Christine Sjöbeck who performed the biochemical analysis and Professor Ulf Lundberg who facilitated our use of the laboratory. The project has benefitted from discussions with Kate Hunt, Patrick West and Katja Gillander-Gådin. The study was financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (grant no. 2006-1637 and 2011-0819). Petra Lindfors’ contribution formed part of a senior research fellowship at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University.
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Östberg, V., Almquist, Y.B., Folkesson, L. et al. The Complexity of Stress in Mid-Adolescent Girls and Boys. Child Ind Res 8, 403–423 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-014-9245-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-014-9245-7