The Role of Gender in Teachers’ Perceived Stress and Heart Rate

Abstract

Gender differences in cardiovascular variables in response to laboratory stressors have been described. In real situations, although occupational stress is considered one of the major causes of cardiovascular diseases, there are few studies that follow a psychophysiological approach, such as in a work context. In these settings, excessive environmental demands might produce nonadaptive emotional responses, depending on the way people perceive their work settings. Concretely, there are few published studies that take into account the changes of perceived stress (PS) and/or heart rate (HR) considering the ecological moment. Thus, our interest was to study the changes of both variables during two working days (WDs). Moreover, we considered the effect of gender as a modulator of these variables. For this purpose, 35 full-time school teachers participated in the research. PS was measured by means of a self-report and HR was continuously recorded during the WD at the beginning and end of an academic year. Results showed changes in HR during the WD and higher PS levels when teachers were with students on both WDs. Furthermore, there were increases in both variables at the end of the academic year. In spite of the similar responses in both variables studied, HR and PS did not correlate significantly. We conclude that our data, taken from a real work setting, show that HR and PS responses to a WD in teachers seems to be different, showing some gender differences.

Respuestas psicobiológicas en profesores al inicio y al final de un curso académico

“…Taking into account this result, we consider that there is not higher PS depending on the period of the academic year. This is in accordance with Serrano, Moya-Albiol & Salvador (2008), who did not find differences in psychosomatic symptoms between two working days. In fact, scientific literature has only found differences in PS between working and holiday periods (Moya-Albiol et al 2005).…”

“…These results support, in our sample, the tendency of men to suffer from CVD in comparison to premenopausal women (Belkic et al 2004). Nevertheless, the literature indicates that, in general, men are more reactive in BP and women in HR (Serrano et al 2008), but in this sample, men are more HR reactive to a working day than women. On the other hand, we do not find gender differences in BP, which is in accordance with the statement that relationships between work stress and BP apply to everybody, and not exclusiveley to men (Kulkarni et al 1998).…”

Naturalistic monitoring of the affect-heart rate relationship: A day reconstruction study.

“…QT interval, P-wave duration). Where high resolution inner heartbeat information is not required, light-weight wearable heartbeat interval (or R-R) recorders have facilitated simple non-intrusive high frequency and accurate collection of HR data (Buchheit, Simon, Viola, Doutreleau, Piquard, & Gabrielle, 2004;Serrano et al, 2008). Agreement analyses for commercially available heartbeat interval recorders and traditional ECG recorders typically find a high degree of concordance between both types of systems across a range of samples and metrics of cardiac chronotropy (Gamelin, Berthoin, & Bosquet, 2006;Heilman & Porges, 2007;Nunan, Jakovljevic, Donovan, Hodges, Sandercock, & Brodie, 2008).…”

“…It may be the case that low levels of psychosocial resources and high negative affectivity are indicative of a tendency towards subtle but chronic patterns of reactivity to everyday events and an attenuated response to more exaggerated stressors as encountered in laboratory studies. However, the relationship between affect and HR in ecologically valid continuous monitoring studies remains unclear, with studies finding no relationship (Serrano et al, 2008), and others finding correspondence in cases controlling for activity and biological variables but not important alternative psychological factors such as personality (Carpeggiani et al, 2005). In several studies the assessment of affect has also been restricted, for instance through the use of measures requiring participants to endorse a single point on a circular dimension (circumplex) indicative of affective space (Jacob et al, 1999).…”

“…Psychological states such as affect are important moderators of the cardiovascular response to laboratory stressors, but few studies have attempted to relate fluctuation in emotional experience to cardiovascular activity in everyday environments (Heponiemi, Ravaja, Elovainio, Naatanen, & Keltikangas-Jarvinen, 2006;Serrano, Moya-Albiol, and Salvador, 2008). In some cases, HR laboratory findings have been reproduced in naturalistic settings using continuous data capture (Vrijkotte, van Doornen, & Geus, 2000).…”