While many young teenagers can reel off a list of major and minor stresses they are experiencing at home and at school, a new study suggests there are important differences to be found in how those students rank these stressors depending on their gender, race and emotional resilience, according to Bonnie Leadbeater, associate professor of psychology.
Students in their early teens "all worry about similar things -- ranging from making good grades to coping with bodily changes caused by puberty, forming friendships and romances, and adapting to new rules at home," says Professor Leadbeater. "But the worries topping each list varied in ways that yield new insights into why some teens flourish in middle school and others falter."
The Yale research focused on 500 students at White Plains Middle School, a suburban school just north of New York City that was chosen for its economic and ethnic diversity. About 59 percent of the 6th- and 7th-graders in the two-year study were non-Hispanic whites, 26 percent were Hispanic, 22 percent were African-American and 3 percent were from other races or ethnic groups. The majority -- 79 percent -- lived with two parents, and 31 percent were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Professor Leadbeater's co- investigators in the study were Sidney J. Blatt, chief of the psychology section in the Yale psychiatry department, and Gabriel P. Kuperminc, postdoctoral research associate in psychology.
Concerns about academic performance were high on all the students' stress lists, although surprisingly few students reported experiencing peer pressure to misbehave. Beyond these similarities, however, students reported striking differences in what worried them most. For example:
The study also focused on whether students experienced middle school as a safe, orderly place that fostered positive relationships with teachers and other students. Overall, the students were positive about the school's climate for learning, saying they felt motivated and able to learn there. They also acknowledged a high level of caring, respect and trust between students and their teachers, and felt that students were treated equally.
However, like students at many other U.S. middle schools, the teens were worried about student conflicts at school and about students being disruptive. In fact, about two-thirds of the participants said the school was noisy and more than half said students disobeyed the rules. Only 27 percent felt that students liked one another, 24 percent that they respected each other and 31 percent that they helped each other.
"Recognizing that peer conflicts cause stress for students, many middle schools have established peer mediation programs, but funding is needed to make them more widely available," says Professor Leadbeater. "As adults, we tend to think of school primarily as a place for academics, but young teens pay as much attention to the social aspects as they do to their studies."
The Yale findings also suggested that viewing the school climate favorably was particularly important to the adjustment of students who viewed their neighborhoods as more dangerous or who lived in single-parent families. Boys who described the school positively were less likely to get into trouble at school, and were more likely to describe themselves and be described by their teachers as well-adjusted. That link between viewing school favorably and being well-adjusted was much less apparent in girls, says Professor Leadbeater.
"We concluded that students can learn better and have more positive school experiences if more effort is devoted to teaching students how to build better relationships with each other, and to creating an atmosphere in which conflicts are dealt with fairly and resolved," contends the psychologist.