Examining weekly psychological distress and stress in first-year university students: Results from the Pilot Plus program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The transition into university is the first major life transition an individual faces. It is often associated with increases in acute stress and psychological distress (Gall et al., 2000), but can be mitigated through physical activity (PA) (Bray & Born, 2004). Our knowledge of students' stress and distress, however, has been largely limited to cross-sectional or prospective studies with substantial gaps between assessment periods. The current study aims to examine patterns of stress and distress throughout students' first semester at university, and the potential impact of a PA-based intervention. Methods: Participants included 70 first-year university students (Mage=17.85+/-0.51, 49 females), enrolled into an intervention (n=28) or control condition (n=42) as part of a quasi-experimental trial. All participants completed weekly assessments of perceived stress, psychological distress, and PA. Mixed effects modeling were used to examine patterns of stress and distress as primary outcomes of interest. Results: Findings indicate a significant main effect in time for stress (Estimate=-.02, p=.025), while approaching significance for psychological distress (Estimate=-.06, p=.055). Time by condition interactions were not significant (p's .17-.20), though there were larger decreases stress and distress over time for those in the intervention condition. Conclusion: Findings suggest that university students experience the highest amount of psychological distress and stress upon immediate entry into university, and that a linear decline occurs as the semester progresses. PA-based interventions may be effective in helping decrease stress and distress, but efforts may need to target the acute transition into university. Future studies with larger samples are required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".