Exploring the Barriers to online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic. A case of Pakistani Students from HEIs [Higher Education Institutions]

The main objective of this study is to explore various barriers that are preventing Pakistani HEIs (universities) students from learning online in this COVID-19 pandemic. Applying a qualitative research design, twelve (12) in-depth interviews were conducted with individual business school participants (students), selected at undergraduate and graduate levels to participate. Data were collected from six (06) universities in Islamabad, Pakistan. After collecting the data using a self-developed questionnaire, a thematic analysis method within the qualitative research was applied to uncover several barriers relating to the objective of this study. Eight themes emerged from the interview data: internet technology access, the content of digital slides, student’s perception towards online learning, power outages during COVID-19 pandemic, students’ fear of losing marks and impact on employment, faculty skills in using technology to teach online, student’s stress and health in the COVID-19 pandemic and student skills to use distance learning tools. Based on the findings, students who live in rural areas are more affected by online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic than students in urban areas due to identified barriers and, most importantly, lack of technology infrastructure. Opportunities and future recommendations have been provided to the relevant authorities to conduct and deliver smooth online education in the country during pandemic.

An Analysis of the Association Between Work Stress and Health Behaviours in Korean and Japanese Ageing Studies: a Cross-sectional Study

Background and Objectives: Work stress is a risk factor that may be partially responsible for increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. One of the proposed pathways is through unhealthy behaviours. As limited research has focused on the association between work stress and health behaviours in Asian countries, this research aims to explore the effect of work stress on the two health behaviours among employees aged 45 or above in Korea and Japan.Methods: This cross-sectional study based on baseline data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA,2006) and Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR,2007&2009) used logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression to investigate the association between work stress represented by the short version of the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model and smoking (binary current smoking) and drinking (categorical volume of alcohol). In addition, the statistical power was over 80% for odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1.3 in Korea and 1.6 in Japan. Moreover, this research additionally examines the potential interaction between ERI and gender.Results: Smoking and drinking were significantly associated with the ER ratio in the Korean analysis (N=3,478). After the model was fully adjusted, the OR (95% CI) and RRR (95% CI) were 1.45 (1.17-1.80) and 1.43 (1.09-1.90), respectively. In Japan (N=1,504), smoking was associated with the ER ratio (OR 1.37 (1.00-1.87)); however, drinking was not. No statistically significant interaction was found between ERI and gender (p value of 0.82 in Korea and 0.19 in Japan).Conclusions: The results of this study showed that work stress was statistically significantly associated with both health behaviours in the Korean sample and with smoking in Japan. These results potentially suggest the integration of long working time reduction health promotion programmes in these two Asian countries.

Discrimination, Stress, and Health Across the Life Course

There is a paucity of research that seeks to understand why race disparities in health across the life course remain elusive. Two such explanations that have been garnering attention is stress and discrimination. This symposium contains papers seeking to address the impact of discrimination or stress on African American health or health disparities across the life course. Brown and colleagues examine the differential effects of chronic stress exposure by means of latent class analysis on mental and physical health in the HRS. Analysis revealed four subgroups, each demonstrated a typological response pattern with the most pronounced health consequences for high stress exposure, appraisal and few or no coping mechanisms. This suggests an alternative approach to examining the stress-health link by using a combined person- and variable-centered approach. Thomas Tobin and colleagues evaluate the life course processes through which early life racial discrimination (ELRD) and racial centrality shape adult allostatic load (AL) among older Blacks in the Nashville Stress and Health Study. Findings indicate that racial centrality is protective against adult high AL for those who experienced racial discrimination as children or adolescents. Cobb and colleagues examine how multiple attributed reasons for everyday discrimination relates to all-cause mortality risk among older Blacks in HRS. The authors report the 3 or more attributed reasons for everyday discrimination is a particularly salient risk factor for mortality in later life. This collection of papers provides insights into how discrimination or stress impacts African American health or health disparities in middle to late life.

Age-Related Change in the Daily Stressor Reactivity Across 20 Years of Adulthood

Affective reactivity to everyday stressful events has been shown to be an important predictor of poor mental and physical health. The purpose of this study was to examine longitudinal changes in daily stress across 30 years of adulthood as a critical first step for understanding aging-related trends in daily stress. We used data from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) to calculate exposure and reactivity to daily stressors collected during telephone interviews over the course of 8 consecutive days. These daily assessment bursts were conducted in 1997, 2007, and 2018. Data were comprised of 33,931 daily interviews from 2,880 adults ages 25-74 at the first burst. Results indicated decreased stressor reactivity over time but this decrease was greater for younger adults. Discussion will focus on how examining change in daily stress processes is critical for illuminating stress and health.

Reducing behavioral health symptoms by addressing minority stressors in LGBTQ adolescents: a randomized controlled trial of Proud & Empowered

Background Minority stress may lead to poorer mental health for sexual and gender minority adolescents, yet no interventions have been tested through an RCT to address these concerns. Methods We report on an RCT of an intervention—Proud & Empowered—with four high schools. Measures assess the intervention’s impact on mental health symptoms. Results Compared to the control, participants in the treatment condition reported significant differences in minority stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Moderation analyses showed that the intervention significantly moderated the relationship between minority stress and PTSD (b = -1.28, p = .032), depression (b = -0.79, p = .023), and suicidality (b = 0.14, p = .012) symptoms; those in the intervention condition had mitigated relationships between measures of stress and health outcomes compared to those in the control condition. Conclusions Results suggest that Proud & Empowered help reduce mental health symptoms and exposure to minority stressors and build coping strategies. Trial Registration The intervention was registered on clinicaltrials.gov on August 1, 2019 under Trial #NCT04041414.

Many Faces of Sleep: Diverse Sleep Characteristics and Their Joint Associations With Stress on Health in Adulthood

Two separate bodies of literature point to the significant roles of sleep and stress and their associations with health outcomes in adulthood. To further extend the field’s knowledge on sleep, stress, and health, it is essential to consider the multi-dimensional aspects of sleep and diverse stress contexts and identify ways in which the three factors are interrelated to each other. Different sleep characteristics may have varying implications for stress processes that, in turn, shape health outcomes. Therefore, this symposium integrates diverse characteristics of sleep (duration, quality, and pileup) in conjunction with various stress processes and experiences (bereavement, stressor exposure and appraisals, rumination), and examines their associations with cognitive, emotional, and physiological health outcomes. The first paper by Vigoureux and colleagues investigates the interaction between daily sleep and stressor frequency and severity on daily rumination. The second paper by Slavish and colleagues examines the bidirectional associations between daily stress and sleep duration and efficiency. The third paper by Mu and colleagues explores the mediated associations of sleep quality and sufficiency with work impairment through perceived cognitive abilities and rumination. The fourth paper by Lee uses the stress concept of pileup and tests how pileup of insufficient sleep is associated with day-to-day trajectories of affective and physical well-being. The final paper by Chai and colleagues examines whether sleep quality moderates the association between family bereavement and heart rate variability. The discussant, Dr. Nancy Sin, will integrate key points and discuss considerations for mechanisms and long-term implications of sleep, stress, and health.