A required stress-management course

Should high schools require all ninth graders to take a stress-management course?

Read the three sources and use them to respond to all parts of the question. Cite each source you use by its number, for example (Source 2).

Participants: 240 ninth graders (128 girls and 112 boys) at four public high schools in suburban and rural areas of the Mid-Atlantic United States. Method: Researchers randomly assigned 12 class sections either to a 12-week stress-management course or to the regular health class. The course met once a week for 50 minutes and taught students to reinterpret stressful events, break problems into steps they could act on, and slow their breathing when tense. Students completed a perceived stress questionnaire (scores from 0 to 40, higher scores meaning more stress) before the course, at the end and three months later. Results: In the course sections, mean stress fell from 19.8 to 15.1 by the end of the course and was 15.9 three months later. In the regular health sections, mean stress went from 19.5 to 19. Students who attended fewer than half of the lessons showed almost no change.

Participants: 1,050 students in grades 9 to 12 from one large school district in Texas. Method: Students completed an anonymous online survey about how they usually respond to stressful school problems, and the district provided each student's number of absences that semester with names removed. Researchers correlated the survey answers with absences. Results: Students who more often used problem-focused strategies, such as making a plan or asking a teacher for help, had fewer absences (r = −0.31). Students who more often avoided problems, for example by ignoring an assignment or trying not to think about a test, had more absences (r = +0.27). Only 22% of students said anyone had ever taught them a strategy for handling stress. The researchers noted that the survey could not show whether the way students coped caused the differences in absences.

Participants: 610 ninth graders at four high schools in one Ohio county. Method: Two schools made a stress-management course required for all ninth graders; the other two offered the same course as a voluntary after-school club. Schools chose their own approach, so students were not randomly assigned. Students completed the same stress questionnaire as in Source 1 at the start and end of the school year. Results: Students who joined the voluntary club lowered their mean stress score by 5.6 points, and students in the required course lowered theirs by 3.2 points. However, at the two required-course schools all of the students who began the year with the highest stress scores took the course, while at the two voluntary schools only 9% of the highest-stress students joined the club. In end-of-year comments, 41% of required-course students described the course as “one more class to get through.”