Högberg Björn, Strandh Mattias, Hagquist Curt
Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Sweden.
Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Sweden; Centre for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Karlstad University, Sweden.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 Feb 26;250:112890. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112890.
Increasing levels of psychosomatic symptoms, and other mental health problems, among adolescents, and especially among girls, have been reported across various countries. The "educational stressors hypothesis" states that this trend can be explained by an increasing amount of stressors in the school environment. This study tests this hypothesis, using repeated cross-sectional data, between the years 1993-2017, from the Health Behaviours of School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Regression and decomposition techniques are used to investigate the role of school stress for trends in psychosomatic symptoms, and for gender differences in symptoms. Results show that the effects of school stress on psychosomatic symptoms have become stronger over time, but that they can only account for a small share of the overall increase in symptoms since 1993. However, school stress has increased more among girls than among boys, and it explains about half of the growth of the gender gap in symptoms. Thus, school stress accounts for a substantial portion of the increase in symptoms for girls, but only a minor share of the increase for boys. In sum, we found weak evidence for the educational stressors hypothesis in regard to the overall trend in symptoms, but strong evidence for it in explaining the growing gender gap.
据报道，各国青少年，尤其是女孩，身心症状及其他心理健康问题的发生率不断上升。“教育压力源假说”认为，这一趋势可以用学校环境中压力源的增加来解释。本研究利用1993年至2017年间学龄儿童健康行为（HBSC）调查的重复横断面数据对这一假说进行了检验。采用回归和分解技术来研究学校压力对身心症状趋势的作用，以及症状的性别差异。结果表明，随着时间的推移，学校压力对身心症状的影响变得更强，但自1993年以来，它只能解释症状总体增加的一小部分。然而，女孩的学校压力比男孩增加得更多，它解释了症状性别差距增长的约一半。因此，学校压力在女孩症状增加中占很大一部分，但在男孩症状增加中只占很小一部分。总之，我们发现关于症状总体趋势的教育压力源假说证据不足，但在解释日益扩大的性别差距方面有充分证据。
