Rahal et al

Question 1

What can this study be used for?

Answer 1

Health beliefs, sociocultural aspects of stress, biopsychosocial model

Question 2

Year

Answer 2

2019

Question 3

Aim

Answer 3

Assess whether SSS influences health through psychological and physiological responses to stress.

Question 4

Participants

Answer 4

91 Los Angeles teenagers (seniors and recent graduates of high school).

Question 5

Research design

Answer 5

Quasi-experiment

Question 6

Procedure

Answer 6

• SSS was measured using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (Youth Version). Participants are shown a ladder with ten rungs and they signal where they think they rank amongst their peers.
• They were told they had to prepare and present a speech to a panel of people about why they were qualified for their ideal job. They prepared for 5 mins and presented for 5 mins to two confederates who gave non-verbal, negative feedback. They then had to subtract by 13s starting at 2935 and had to start again each time they got one wrong. They did this for five mins.
• To measure their physiological responses to stress, their cortisol levels were measured before, during and after the stress test.
  To measure their psychological responses to stress they completed a questionnaire to measure their levels of “fear” (This was sub-scale of the PANAS scale questionnaire).
• In the analysis the researchers controlled for SES to isolate SSS as being an independent factor influence stress responses.

Question 7

Results

Answer 7

• SSS was correlated with family and parental education (0.41 & 0.31) and did not differ by gender or ethnicity. This suggests there’s some connection between SES and SSS, although it’s quite weak.
• Participants with low SSS had a slight but statistically significantly higher fear response to the TSST, as measured using the PANAS questionnaire.

Question 8

Evaluation

Answer 8

☑️ The SSS was measured using a scale adapted for teenagers
☑️ Controlled for SES, which means SSS is isolated as a variable - high construct validity
🚫 No cause-effect relationship - low internal validity
🚫 Participant variability uncontrolled
🚫 Not generalizable to adults
🚫 Questionnable ecological validity