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What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains

BACKGROUND: The frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years....

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Autores principales: Davey, Graham C. L., Meeten, Frances, Field, Andy P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8501938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658461
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10608-021-10270-0
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author Davey, Graham C. L.
Meeten, Frances
Field, Andy P.
author_facet Davey, Graham C. L.
Meeten, Frances
Field, Andy P.
author_sort Davey, Graham C. L.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years. METHODS: In two studies we investigate the levels and domains of pathological worrying in university student participants. Study 1 is a retrospective study of Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) data collected between 2001 and 2019. Study 2 describes the development of the Student Worry Questionnaire, a short and easily delivered measure of student worrying that identifies both frequency of worry as well as the student-relevant domains across which worrying occurs. RESULTS: Study 1 revealed a steady increase in student worry scores of around 20% between 2001 and 2019, with a significant positive correlation between year of data collection and mean PSWQ score. The domain scores in Study 2 indicated that academic work was a significantly higher worry than any of the other domains, and worries about intimate relationships and ‘what people think of me’ were also worries that scored higher than either financial or health worries. CONCLUSIONS: The present studies indicate that pathological worrying can be added to the list of anxiety- and stress-related symptoms that have been shown to be on the increase in student populations in recent decades, and we discuss whether these increases represent a greater willingness to report symptoms or a genuine increase in experienced symptoms over time.
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spelling pubmed-85019382021-10-12 What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains Davey, Graham C. L. Meeten, Frances Field, Andy P. Cognit Ther Res Original Article BACKGROUND: The frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years. METHODS: In two studies we investigate the levels and domains of pathological worrying in university student participants. Study 1 is a retrospective study of Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) data collected between 2001 and 2019. Study 2 describes the development of the Student Worry Questionnaire, a short and easily delivered measure of student worrying that identifies both frequency of worry as well as the student-relevant domains across which worrying occurs. RESULTS: Study 1 revealed a steady increase in student worry scores of around 20% between 2001 and 2019, with a significant positive correlation between year of data collection and mean PSWQ score. The domain scores in Study 2 indicated that academic work was a significantly higher worry than any of the other domains, and worries about intimate relationships and ‘what people think of me’ were also worries that scored higher than either financial or health worries. CONCLUSIONS: The present studies indicate that pathological worrying can be added to the list of anxiety- and stress-related symptoms that have been shown to be on the increase in student populations in recent decades, and we discuss whether these increases represent a greater willingness to report symptoms or a genuine increase in experienced symptoms over time. Springer US 2021-10-09 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8501938/ /pubmed/34658461 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10608-021-10270-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Article
Davey, Graham C. L.
Meeten, Frances
Field, Andy P.
What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title_full What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title_fullStr What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title_full_unstemmed What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title_short What’s Worrying Our Students? Increasing Worry Levels over Two Decades and a New Measure of Student Worry Frequency and Domains
title_sort what’s worrying our students? increasing worry levels over two decades and a new measure of student worry frequency and domains
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8501938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658461
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10608-021-10270-0
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