Behavioural Responses of Children to Stress: A Polish-American Cross-cultural Study

Abstract

The behaviour a child adopts in response to stress may be viewed on a continuum ranging from adaptive, effective coping behaviours to extreme maladaptive efforts to meet stressful demands. In order to assess children's behavioural responses to stress, a behaviour rating scale was developed-the Stress Response Scale (SRS). The purpose of this study was to gather SRS data on a population of Polish children, so that we might examine differences between them and their US counterparts, in terms of their overall rated adjustment, and the typical behavioural responses to stress they might manifest. The results showed that, in general, Polish children tend to be rated by their teachers as somewhat higher than their US counterparts, in terms of the overall magnitude of their behavioural maladjustment. This is especially true for children aged 7 to 12 years. However, although the overall level of maladjustment was higher among the Polish children, the samples were similar in terms of the specific stress response patterns with relatively similar distributions of Acting-out, Passive-Aggressive, Overactive, Repressed, and Dependent patterns being found in both samples.