Addressing Adolescent Stress in School: Perceptions of a High School Wellness Center.

Adolescents are often burdened with academic, home, and peer stressors. With adolescent mental health issues and suicide on the rise, administrators have worked with nonprofit organizations and the community to address stress and internalized behavior problems. School-based wellness centers are tranquil rooms with various sensory activities, calming nature scenes, and sounds for relaxation purposes. School-based wellness centers may have behavioral effects by reducing exposure to aversive events and increasing access to positive and negative reinforcers. There has not yet been a formal study of school-based wellness centers published in the literature. In the present study, we used questionnaires to examine the perceptions of 752 students, 124 parents, and 69 school staff of their high school wellness center. Results indicated that stakeholders had positive perceptions of the wellness center. In particular, results implied that stakeholders believed the wellness center contributed to students' academic success, elevation of mood, confidence, and coping skills. Results also suggested that attendance at the wellness center was associated with a decrease in student stress and anxiety, though recommendations for improvements were noted. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43494-022-00079-1.

Exploring Diurnal Cortisol Rhythms of Kindergarten Teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine.

Teachers' stress is a dynamic combination of the individual teacher's characteristics and characteristics of the classroom and school environment. To date, there are limited studies on teachers' stress in the context of lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), where working conditions as well as general political and economic circumstances might pose a considerable threat for teachers' well-being. This study explores whether certain combinations of individual and environmental experiences of teachers in LMICs may result in stress, assessed as patterns of diurnal cortisol rhythm. Participants were kindergarten teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine, two LMICs in Europe. Latent Profile Analysis identified three subgroups of teachers that significantly differed on teachers' education and experience. Preliminary results of Latent Growth Modeling suggested differences between profiles in baseline waking cortisol and patterns of diurnal decline. Teachers in the profile that was characterized by the longest experience working in the field but the lowest level of education showed blunted cortisol in the morning and a flatter slope; a pattern that could indicate a maladaptive cortisol response. Future directions for studying stress processes among teachers in LMICs and implications for policy and practice on how to support teacher well-being in low-resource contexts are discussed.

Reading and spelling skills in German third graders: Examining the role of student and context characteristics.

BACKGROUND: Educational processes and outcomes are influenced by a multitude of factors, including individual and contextual characteristics. Recently, studies have demonstrated that student and context characteristics may produce unique and cumulative effects on educational outcomes. AIMS: The study aimed to investigate (1) the relative contribution of student, classroom, and school characteristics to reading fluency and orthographic spelling, (2) the relative contribution of specific predictors to reading fluency and orthographic spelling within the sets of student, classroom, and school characteristics, and (3) whether the contribution of student, classroom, and school characteristics differs for reading fluency and orthographic spelling. SAMPLE: Participants were 789 German third-grade students from 56 classrooms in 34 schools. METHOD: Students completed an intelligence test and a questionnaire assessing self-control. Reading fluency and orthographic spelling performance were assessed using standardized achievement tests. Multilevel structural equation modelling was used to control for the hierarchical structure of educational data. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Variances in students' reading and spelling skills were in large part explained by student characteristics (>90%). Classroom and school characteristics yielded little variance. Student-level intelligence and self-control were significantly related to reading fluency. For orthographic spelling, student-level intelligence and self-control, class-average intelligence, and, at the school level, the socio-economic status of the school's neighbourhood were significant predictors. Future research needs to investigate relevant classroom and school factors that may directly and indirectly relate to academic outcomes.

Factor structure and psychometrics of the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior survey instrument.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the factor structure and psychometric properties of data collected with the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior Survey (AHRBS) instrument. METHODS: Measures of the AHRBS instrument were tested using statistical analyses to assess validity and reliability of data collected from a sample of 1992 Indiana adolescents. RESULTS: Factor analyses yielded a 13-factor solution with acceptable model fit statistics. Tests of internal consistency reliability for data in instrument scales ranged from 0.455 to 0.916. Measures were consistent across adolescent subdemographic categories. CONCLUSION: The AHRBS instrument is a valuable tool for investigating adolescent drug use.