More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science
This paper lays out the Stress Measurement Network leadership team's perspective on stress measurement, and presents a comprehensive model of relationships between stress, aging, and health that emphasizes the importance of the context in which stressor is experienced. The paper can be found here.
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Legend: Figure 1 presents a transdisciplinary model that describes “stress” as a set of interactive and emergent processes. The figure illustrates that stressors are experienced within the context of a person’s life, represented by the contextual factors in the blue triangle. These contextual factors include individual-level characteristics such as personality and demographic factors, current and past stressor exposures, the environment in which one lives, and protective factors; all of which combine to determine the baseline allostatic state, and the lens through which stressors are perceived and assigned meaning.
Contextual factors and habitual processes together influence psychological and physiological responses to acute and daily stressors. These responses, if dysregulated, are thought to lead to allostatic load and ultimately biological aging and early disease.
Citation: Epel ES, Crosswell AD, Mayer SE, Prather AA, Slavich GM, Puterman E, Mendes WB. (2018). More than a feeling: An integrative review of stress measurement for population science. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 49, 146-169.
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