TY - JOUR
T1 - A longitudinal study of perceived stress and cortisol responses in an undergraduate student population from India
AU - Batabyal, Anuradha
AU - Bhattacharya, Anindita
AU - Thaker, Maria
AU - Mukherjee, Shomen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Batabyal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/6/1
Y1 - 2021/6/1
N2 - Young adults entering college experience immense shifts in personal and professional environments. Such a potentially stressful event may trigger multiple psychological and physiological effects. In a repeated-measures longitudinal survey (N = 6 time-points) of first year cohort of residential undergraduate students in India, this study evaluates multiple psychological parameters: PSS14 (Perceived Stress Scale), K10 (distress scale) and positive mood measures, along with salivary cortisol levels. We find that compared to women, men showed significantly lower levels of salivary cortisol and also a decrease in perceived stress (PSS14) and distress (K10) with time. By contrast, women reported similar perceived stress and distress levels over time but had higher cortisol levels at the end of the academic year. Academic stress was reported by the students to be the most important stressor. This study highlights notable gender-/sex-differences in psychological and physiological stress responses and adds a valuable longitudinal dataset from the Indian undergraduate student cohort which is lacking in literature.
AB - Young adults entering college experience immense shifts in personal and professional environments. Such a potentially stressful event may trigger multiple psychological and physiological effects. In a repeated-measures longitudinal survey (N = 6 time-points) of first year cohort of residential undergraduate students in India, this study evaluates multiple psychological parameters: PSS14 (Perceived Stress Scale), K10 (distress scale) and positive mood measures, along with salivary cortisol levels. We find that compared to women, men showed significantly lower levels of salivary cortisol and also a decrease in perceived stress (PSS14) and distress (K10) with time. By contrast, women reported similar perceived stress and distress levels over time but had higher cortisol levels at the end of the academic year. Academic stress was reported by the students to be the most important stressor. This study highlights notable gender-/sex-differences in psychological and physiological stress responses and adds a valuable longitudinal dataset from the Indian undergraduate student cohort which is lacking in literature.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107327693&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0252579
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0252579
M3 - Article
C2 - 34086754
AN - SCOPUS:85107327693
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6 June
M1 - e0252579
ER -
