Stress (Psychology)

This study is designed to determine the prevalences and sources of administrative stress among chief administrative officers in Broward County, Florida nonpublic schools. The study offers a brief history of nonpublic school education in Broward County, in Florida, and in the United States. In a review of the literature the study identified pertinent administrative and managerial stress research. The researcher developed the Nonpublic School Administrative Stress Survey (NSASS) instrument which was used to collect the information discussed. The study concluded that administrators have some specific sources of administrative stress. Respondents identified educational development as a source of administrative stress. This component included specific problem children, sufficient time spent with students, scheduling of classes, designing school programs, implementing school programs and establishing and implementing innovative ideas. Significance was discovered in determining the administrators self-reported perception of administrative stress for 3 of 11 variables. The variables of age, highest earned degree and years of experience at a particular school were significant in determining the perceptions of administrative stress held by the nonpublic school administrators. The variables of sex, state certification of administrators, clerical status (religious degree), school size, school level, school type, school administrative structure and certified status of school faculty, were inconclusive in determining significance as variables of perceived administrative stress. It was further discovered that biographical variables are more significant factors in determining perceptions of administrative stress than are environmental variables. The researcher concludes that there is a need for much greater emphasis on research in the nonpublic sector of education with particular emphasis upon the nonpublic school administrator. The results of the data are based on 62 nonpublic school chief administrative officers in Broward County, Florida nonpublic schools.

This study examined the effectiveness of citizen participation
strategies occurring most frequently in the administration of educational
programs.
Determining the most frequently occurring citizen participation
strategies required an exhaustive search of case studies noting the frequency
of occurrence of the various strategies. A second search of the
case studies yielded twenty critical criteria or issues which were frequently
mentioned in the selection of a particular citizen participation
strategy. Strategies found to occur most frequently were the public
hearing, advisory committees, organizations and workshops.
A panel of experts was randomly selected from a list of educational
leaders with experience in citizen participation. A questionnaire
was drafted, field tested and then mailed to each expert.
It was found that educational leaders rank the advisory committee
strategy as the most effective strategy followed by the workshop, organizations
and public hearings. Another conclusion reached was that when specific criteria are suggested, the preferred strategy is subject to
change based on the criteria and circunstance of the situation.
The study further revealed that when a specific criteria or issue
is weighted most heavily, the educational leaders identify different
strategies as being most effective for the various circumstances. Differences
in the frequencies of first choice responses within the demographic
categories were also interpreted to be significant by the chi-square
test.

Despite long-held recognition of the importance of situations in psychological understanding and analysis, current research is lacking in discernment of structurally important elements of situations as they relate to behavior (Funder et al., 2012). Using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ: Wagerman & Funder, 2009), an 89-item measure used to assess the psychological properties of situations, the major aim of this study was to identify a reliable set of categories or types of situations that people experience every day. Data was collected online from a U.S. sample (N = 186). Participants were asked to recall details about a situation he or she experienced during the previous day (i.e. "What were you doing yesterday at this time?"). Participants were then asked to rate that situation using the RSQ. Inverse factor analyses revealed the following everyday situation types: 1) Social Closeness, 2) Obligatory, 3) Cognitive, 4) Enjoyable/Aesthetic, and 5) Anxiety Inducing.

Experimentally naive rats show variance in their locomotor reactivity to novelty, some displaying higher (HR) while others displaying lower (LR) reactivity, associated with vulnerability to stress. LRHR phenotype is proposed as an antecedent to the development of stress hyper responsiveness. Results presented here show emergence of antidepressive-like behavior following peripubertal-juvenile exposure to chronic variable physical (CVP) and chronic variable social stress (CVS) in HR rats, and depressive-like behavior following CVP in the LRs. The antidepressive-like behavior in HR rats was accompanied by increased levels of acetylated Histone3 (acH3) and acetylated Histone4 (acH4) at the hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) P2 and P4 promoters respectively. This effect may mediate increased mossy fibre (MF) terminal field size, particularly the suprapyramidal mossy fibre projection volume (SP-MF), in the HR animals following both stress regimens. These findings show that chronic variable stress during adolescence induces individual differences in molecular, neuromorphological and behavioral parameters between LRs and HRs, which provides further evidence that individual differences in stress responsiveness is an important factor in resistance or vulnerability to stress-induced depression and/or anxiety.

In today's era of high stakes testing and accountability, school principals are confronted with many difficult challenges in addition to those traditionally experienced by principals given the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the many mandates each school principal must report on annually. With mandated curriculum standards and widespread demand to improve student achievement, principals face a multitude of administrative tasks. As the school accountability deadline to meet the 2014 federal objective of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 rapidly draws closer for the majority of states, this federal legislation has created increasingly high stress levels, potentially the highest ever, for principals across the country. ... The proposed study is significant to the field of education because this study provides the most current research regarding the mental and physical effects of work-related stress on elementary school principals in an era of increased accountability and the impact stress has on the school climate. Further, this study offers school principals a repertoire of effective coping mechanisms that can be utilized to help reduce their perceived stress levels. Over the time of the study, it was repeatedly reported by the principal participants that their work stress had increased, which was found to have impacted their health as well as the school climate.

This study investigates the relationship between mobbing, burnout, and religious coping styles among Protestant clergy. Mobbing is an emotionally abusive workplace behavior and is defined as the prolonged malacious harassment of a coworker by a group of other members of an organization to secure the removal from the organization of the one who is targeted. Mobbing has only recently become a focus of attention in the US. To date, there are no known studies investigating mobbing in the workplace setting of the church. The broad purpose of this study is to determine if Protestant pastors experience mobbing, how they are affected by it, and how they cope with it. Four religious coping styles - Self-directing, Collaborative, Deferring, and Surrender to God - are investigated to determine how coping styles of religious individuals function in mediating the effect of mobbing or burnout. Burnout is assessed throught he Maslach Burnout Inventory and measures emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This study utilizes Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and presents two models of mediational analysis.... The results of analysis indicate that Protestant clergy do experience being mobbed which results in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Clergy with a self-directing coping style experience more burnout than do those who utilize a surrender to God style. Differences in indirect effects between models were noted. The implications to theory and practice are discussed.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a disability resulting in functional impairments and heightened dependence on others. Family members of persons with TBI can assume added responsibilities during the adjustment to the disability and rehabilitation process, placing strain on the family system. Community re-integration is a primary goal of the rehabilitation process for persons with TBI as this is a step in developing autonomy and promoting independence and productive activity throughout different areas of the person's life (e.g., work, social networks, and home life). This study was designed to examine predictors of community re-integration outcomes of TBI survivors and empirically test the resiliency model of family stress, adjustment, and adaptation while incorporating family needs by surveying caregiving family members. Specific aims of the study include validating relationships of the resiliency model with individual and family outcomes in adaptation and supporting future recommendations for healthcare providers working with families with members with TBI.

The current study utilized a quasi-experimental nonequivalent groups design to investigate whether a 5-week long Mindfulness Meditation Intervention (MMI), would impact measures of attention, positive and negative affect, state and test anxiety, mindfulness, and reactive cortisol levels in 107 school aged children. A series of reliability corrected ANCOVAs were performed on all behavioral variables. Results indicated that those in the MMI group did not differ from their cohorts on any of the behavioral measures. Reactive levels of salivary cortisol were also collected and assayed in a subsample of 25 participants. An ANCOVA on cortisol change scores was performed and findings did not reach statistical significance. Post-hoc power analyses revealed that this could be due to inadequate sample size. To conclude studies utilizing a MMI of longer duration or with larger sample sizes may be required in assessing the usefulness of MMIs in behavioral and physiological measures in non-clinical child populations.

Evidence suggests that self-reports of the frequency of an event, the most common way of measuring rates of conflict, are an unreliable source of data and that minor changes in question format can result in major changes in the results obtained (Bless, Bohner, Hild & Schwarz 1992; Schwarz, 1991; Schwarz, 1999; Winkielman, Knauper & Schwarz, 1998). In the conflict literature, different studies report different rates of conflict and different associations between conflict frequency and individual adjustment. Therefore, the present study examined how alterations in the measurement of conflict frequency affected how many conflicts participants reported and whether different measures of conflict were differentially associated with psychological adjustment outcomes (i.e., alcohol use, drug use, depression, delinquency, and interpersonal support). Response scales, reference periods, and question formats of conflict measures were manipulated to examine differences in conflict frequency reports. Results indicate that the changes in conflict measurement produce varied amounts of conflict across conditions and that changes in the measurement of conflict frequency change the associations between conflict frequency and adjustment outcomes.