Cross-Canada Release of the Post-Secondary Student Stressors Index (PSSI): Protocol for a Cross-sectional, Repeated Measures Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of mental health-related problems, including stress, psychological distress, and symptoms of mental illnesses, continues to increase among Canadian postsecondary student populations. Excessive stress in this population has been linked to a number of negative academic and health outcomes. Despite attempts to improve mental health at postsecondary institutions, a persistent gap exists in the evaluation of the specific sources of stress for students within the postsecondary setting. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to report the study protocol for a cross-Canada, multisite launch of the Post-Secondary Student Stressors Index (PSSI), which will engage postsecondary institutions across the country as partners and facilitate improved measurement of the sources of student stress, in addition to contributing toward improved tailoring of upstream mental health services and support. METHODS: Created in collaboration with students, the PSSI is a validated 46-item tool assessing stressors across five domains: academics, learning environment, campus culture, interpersonal, and personal stressors. The tool is designed to be applicable to students at all years, levels, and areas of study. Data will be collected longitudinally at multiple time points over the course of each academic year. RESULTS: We recruited 15 postsecondary institutions across Canada for the first year, inviting students to participate in an online survey including questions concerning sociodemographic characteristics, stress, mental health, and resiliency. Analyses, including appropriate data visualization, will be conducted to determine the impact of specific stressors on mental health, linking responses over time to allow for the observation of changes in trends. CONCLUSIONS: The PSSI is an intuitive and evidence-informed tool that can aid postsecondary institutions in evaluating the sources of student stress on their campuses. This multisite project will make a substantial contribution to the current literature regarding postsecondary student stress and allow institutions across the country to improve the tailoring of upstream mental health services in order to directly support the unique needs of their student body. Opportunities for knowledge translation and exchange are discussed. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/27713.
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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 | 0.028 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.038 | 0.009 |
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".