Stress Mind-Set Intervention With College Undergraduate Students

• In Event: 35.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.078-6 - Understanding Student Perspectives Regarding Stressful Experiences

Abstract

This randomized control experiment explores a stress mindset intervention for college undergraduates, testing whether “stress-is-enhancing” video content influenced participants’ stress mindsets in a positive direction. Undergraduate students (N=236) at a large southwestern public university were recruited via subject pool and randomly assigned (1:1) to treatment and control groups. The primary intervention outcome variable, stress mindset, was measured in both groups pre- and post-intervention. With independent samples t-test, we found stress mindset scores of the treatment group increased positively compared to the control group, (mean difference =0.55, t=5.74, df =158.07, 95% CI 0.36 to 0.74, Cohen’s d=0.80, p<0.001). These results suggest that video-based content can influence students’ overall beliefs about stress toward a view that stress can be enhancing.

Authors

• Molly R Sanders, University of Texas - Austin

• Marie-Anne Suizzo, The University of Texas at Austin