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Early Adolescents' Perceptions of Stress

West Virginia University

This study examined the types of events that early adolescents described as stressful, including the affective response (e.g., anger, sadness, anxiety) and impact (e.g., disruption of daily routine) associated with each event occurrence. Eighty-four male and female 4th-6th graders provided a corpus of 575 stressful events (X = 7.37). Few students described the events most commonly studied by stress researchers. Death of a pet was the most frequently mentioned stressor (69%), followed by death of a relative (60%), grades (32%), and illness/injury (32%). While self concerns, such as physical appearance, and moving to a new home produced the most wide ranging impacts associated with individual stressors, school emerged as the most stressful of the domains considered, generating the highest number of disruptive impacts and the second highest number of affective responses. These data underscore a need to obtain additional information concerning the stressors of early adolescence, as they are perceived by adolescents themselves. The findings are discussed in terms of a necessary distinction between the stresses and strains of early adolescence and the role of school as a chronic strain in the day to day experience of early adolescents.

The Journal of Early Adolescence, Vol. 8, No. 4, 391-403 (1988)
DOI: 10.1177/0272431688084006


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