Assessing Adolescents' Understanding of and Reactions to Stress in Different Cultures

Abstract

This article expands on an emerging mixed-method approach for validating culturally-specific constructs (see Hitchcock et al., 2005). Previous work established an approach for dealing with cultural impacts when assessing psychological constructs and the current article extends these efforts into studying stress reactions among adolescents in Sri Lanka. Ethnographic data collection and analysis techniques were used to construct scenarios that are stressful to Sri Lankan youth, along with survey items that assess their related coping mechanisms. The data were factor analysed, results were triangulated with qualitative findings, and reliability estimates of resulting scales were obtained. This in turn generated a pilot assessment approach that can be used to measure stress and coping reactions in a distinct culture. Use of the procedures described here could be replicated to generate culturally-specific instruments in international contexts, or when working with ethnic minorities within a given nation. This should in turn generate information needed to develop culturally relevant intervention work.