A psychometric study of stress and coping during the International Biomedical Expedition to the Antarctic (IBEA).

A psychometric study was made of stress and coping during the course of the International Biomedical Expedition to Antarctica (IBEA). The stressors were specified by observation, as were the group's behavioral reactions to them, but they produced no significant differences on scales of symptomatology. The repressor/sensitization defensive style of coping was then examined, and although there were grounds for associating repressor tendencies with the low self-reporting of stress, the group sizes were too small to confirm the suggestion statistically. But the question needs now to be taken further, as also does that of laboratory stressors.