Maneuvering through a world of stressors: adolescents' experience of stress, the effectiveness of a psychoeducational program about stress, and the self-perceived need for additional support

Vogelaar, S. (2024)

Doctoral Thesis

The present dissertation investigated adolescents’ overall stress and perceived stressors, the effectiveness of a universal psychoeducational program about stress, the Stress Lessons, and adolescents’ self-referral to a targeted school-based intervention. Another aim was to examine whether adolescents from different demographic groupings vary in their experience of stressors and the effect of psychoeducation. A large and heterogeneous sample was recruited from schools with variation in educational tracks and self-perceived ethnic backgrounds. The sample consisted of 1613 predominantly young adolescents with an average age of 13 years old. Most adolescents have to maneuver through a world of stressors, mostly related to the school environment, their health, and future uncertainty, while adolescents experience less stress from social pressure and financial pressure. Furthermore, our results indicate that the Stress Lessons were effective regarding improving adolescents’ knowledge about stress, but not in terms of stress levels. Finally, we found that adolescents who reported higher levels of test anxiety were generally more likely to show interest in an intervention targeting reduction of performance anxiety after the Stress Lessons. However, we did not find that adolescents with lower levels of social skills were more interested in an intervention targeting improvement of social skills.

• Stress
• Adolescents
• Psychoeducational program
• Ethnic background
• Educational tracks
• Gender
• Response to Intervention
• Self-referral
• Targeted school-based interventions
• Early secondary education

• All authors: Vogelaar, S.
• Supervisor: Westenberg, P.M.; Saab, N.
• Co-supervisor: Miers, A.C.
• Committee: Evers, A.W.M.; Mainhard, M.T.; Stevens, G.W.J.M.; Wolfensberger, M.V.C.; Verkuil, B.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University
• Date: 2024-02-06
• ISBN (print): 9789464697025