Theses and Dissertations

College students are exposed to stress accumulating from daily challenges, personal relationships, financial struggles, and academic pressure. Stressors can challenge an individual to perform better or serve as a hindrance to academic achievement, depending on the individual’s perception of stressors and capacity to overcome them (Lepine et al., 2004). Optimal levels of stress are beneficial to managing responsibilities in a timely manner, while unmanageable levels of stress can negatively impact motivation and achievement. Higher levels of negatively perceived stress could have measurable consequences on academic outcomes, including lower motivation and lower achievement. This study focuses on examining the prospective relationship between levels of college stress and the academic outcomes, accounting for individual differences in vulnerability to stress. Specifically, I examined whether the associations between stress (T2) and academic outcomes (T3) were moderated by earlier (T1) levels of economic hardship and effortful control as risk and resilience factors, respectively. I predicted that higher levels of college stress would be associated with lower academic motivation and performance. I expected that higher effortful control would show a stronger association between higher academic motivation and achievement with lower college stress levels. I also predicted that higher levels of familial economic hardship would exacerbate the influence of college stress on lower academic motivation and achievement. This study utilized data collected from survey measures administered to students during the transition from high school to college. Results demonstrated a significant negative association between increased college stress and higher academic outcomes. A lack of significant interactions propose that economic hardship does not have negative effects on academic outcomes. The findings of this study will help universities to support students experiencing detrimental levels of stress to improve later academic outcomes.

Pediatric chronic pain is common and predicts risk for psychological and pain problems into adulthood. Biopsychosocial risk factors for the development of chronic pediatric pain have been examined, but the key health behavior of caloric consumption has not been explored. Adult and animal data suggest that caloric intake is positively related to chronic pain, and that adiposity and stress-related biological factors may serve as potential mediators. This study predicted that among children: 1) adiposity, flattened diurnal cortisol slopes, and caloric consumption are related to chronic pain, and 2) the caloric consumption—pain relation is mediated by elevated adiposity and/or flattened diurnal cortisol slopes. Methods: Twin children (N = 733) were drawn from the Arizona Twin Project sample. Measures included caregiver-reported caloric intake via five daily food diaries (Age-8); adiposity (composite of waist circumference, body mass index, body fat percentage) and diurnal cortisol slopes via three days of salivary cortisol sampling (Age-9); and caregiver-reported monthly chronic pain (Age-10). Results: Multilevel models (accounting for clustering within families) with sex, age, socioeconomic status, puberty, race/ethnicity as covariates, showed that caloric intake predicted greater waist circumference, which in turn predicted elevated chronic pain. However, adiposity, waist circumference, and diurnal cortisol slopes did not mediate the caloric intake-chronic pain relation. Discussion: Consistent with the literature, caloric intake predicted adiposity, and adiposity predicted pain in a diverse sample of children. More comprehensive assessment of behavioral (sleep, diet quality) and biopsychosocial factors (e.g. inflammation, cortisol; injury; catastrophizing) may aid efforts to prevent pediatric chronic pain.