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A Modified Trier Social Stress Test for Vulnerable Mexican American Adolescents
Published on: July 10, 2017
Adapting under stress: How sociocultural stress intensity and fluctuation shape youth school engagement and
Wen Wen1, Zexi Zhou2, Ming-Te Wang3
1Kersten Institute for Urban Education, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois,United States.
Abstract:
Grounded in the Adaptation-Based Approach model, this study disentangles daily stress intensity (average levels) and fluctuation (intra-person stress variability) to examine their interplay on school engagement and internalizing symptoms concurrently and longitudinally using a national sample of 437 U.S. adolescents (Mage = 14.89; 55.1% female; 23.6% Latino/a, 33.9% Black, 22.9% White, 12.1% Asian American, 7.6% Bi-racial and other) with four bursts of daily diary data (15 days per burst) from 2021 to 2023. Higher stress intensity predicted slower declines in school engagement and flatter increases in internalizing symptoms over time for youth who experienced high-stress fluctuation. Findings challenge deficit-based views of stress and suggest that certain stress experiences may foster adolescent adaptation in academic and psychological adjustment over time.
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